


Flick the Switch

by hexterah



Category: Dance Central (Games), Dance Central 2
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 04:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 47,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/327896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hexterah/pseuds/hexterah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Glitterati are the at the top of the food chain in the city when it comes to dance, but how did they get there?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So there are a billion ways I could picture this happening - different backgrounds, different parents, different everything. But this one stuck with me for some reason and I started writing it out. We'll see where it goes. I mean, I have a basic idea. I just need to "get it all on paper"... ;) 
> 
> (EDIT: Around Chapter 4 is when I fleshed out a complete outline for the whole story! Crossing my fingers that I actually get through it all, haha! ;D)
> 
> (And it took me frickin' forever to come up with the 'kid' names for them. Finally, I just went with the most obvious ones that popped into my head. They will change later, of course. XD)
> 
> I'll put here a small warning for language, angst and a bit of violence. I figure the Glitterati were just created to basically be snarky baddies, but I can't help but thinking that something happened to make them that way.

Sometimes when their mother went to pick them up from dance class, she would find them alone in the studio after practice was over, dancing side-by-side in the mirror. They would have grins on their faces and the room would echo with laughs and squeals.

Sometimes when she went into their room, she would find the G.I. Joes on Jane's bed and the Barbies on Keith's. Sometimes she would find the toys together in between the beds on the floor with their clothes swapped.

Sometimes when she went into the backyard, she would find Jane and Keith in the plastic playhouse, cooking up fake meals and talking about their days at their pretend places of work. Sometimes she would find them on the swings together. One swinging forward, one swinging backward, giggling as they passed each other.

Sometimes when she made her way into the living room, she would find them asleep on the old sectional sofa, sprawled out perpendicular to each other with their heads touching at the center in a dirty blonde mess of tangles.

She would smile at all of these little things she came across and the twins loved seeing their mother smile.

After they hit six years of age, they never saw that smile again.

Their sixth birthday arrived and that night they heard their mother and father fighting in the laundry room. They heard yelling, they heard words they weren't supposed to hear, they heard noises they didn't recognize. Crunches. Thumps. Smashes.

This continued for weeks. Their mother tried to smile for them like she used to, but it was different. It was broken.

She died in a car accident three months later.

Jane and Keith were left with their father, who spiraled deeper into what he and his mother had been fighting about before she died. His temper. Specifically when he drank.

They both got jobs when they turned sixteen. They wanted to be out of the house and away from their father, who sat at home most of the day with a beer in his hand. He was getting workers' comp for an accident that happened at his job. He had been milking that for months. Jane worked as a waitress at a restaurant inside a filthy roller skating rink and Keith had a job as a cashier at a low-end department store on the far side of town.

Keith returned home after the closing shift at the store one particular night. It was well past midnight and he found his father passed out on the couch, the stench of alcohol drifting around the living room - it wasn't surprising. What was though, was the fact that the bathroom light was on. His sister was usually home and in bed by now. Not tonight, apparently.

The door was cracked and Keith hesitated only briefly before shifting towards the yellow light and shutting one eye, peeking through the open sliver with the other.

He saw his sister standing at the mirror, applying eyeshadow. She had never been one to wear makeup, so it took him by surprise. He made his way into the bathroom though, and stood behind her. She knew he was there and she shook her head at her reflection.

"I look like... a raccoon."

Keith chuckled and met her eyes in the mirror. "Hey, at least it's a pretty raccoon."

They stood there for a little over half an hour, Keith helping Jane figure out what looked good on her. In turn, she began randomly putting makeup on him while Keith joked about how fabulous he looked in the mirror. He had obviously never worn makeup either.

The twins kept their voices down and their chuckles quiet, but that didn't stop their father from shoving the bathroom door open as he was making his routine drunken stumble from the couch into his bedroom. It usually happened when he had to go to the bathroom.

"What is this shit?"

The grins on both twins' faces quickly vanished as they looked towards the door, the haze of booze that their father always swam in hitting their noses almost instantly. Neither had time to respond before the man reached out and grabbed Keith's arm, pulling him towards the door. Jane could see their father's fingers digging into Keith's upper arm, the skin quickly turning red under the calloused fingertips. "Makeup, boy? Is there something you aren't telling me?" He shook his son by the arm and dragged him from the bathroom, stopping in the hall momentarily before pushing his face back into the doorframe to sneer at his daughter.

"And take that shit off your face, Jane, right now. _You look like a whore_."

He slammed the bathroom door shut, the noise punctuating his order, and left Jane in the bathroom, backed up against the wall, shutting her eyes against the sudden silence. She knew it wouldn't last though, and only a few heartbeats later she heard muffled yelling. She recognized her father's gruff, angry ranting and her brother's shrill responses, which were suddenly cut off by a noise. Jane couldn't make out what it was through the walls, as thin as they were, but the noise had suddenly thrown her world into slow motion. She moved towards the door of the bathroom and threw it open, emerging in the hallway only to see her father vanish into his bedroom and violently shove his door shut. The walls and all the framed photos of the once pleasant past shuddered then settled, leaving the house in silence once more.

Jane made her way down the hall to the last door on the left, her brother's room, and slipped inside.

"Keith?"

He was seated on the floor at the foot of his bed, his head in his arms and his knees pulled up towards his chest.

"Keith..." She quickly crossed the room and fell to her knees next to him, planting her hands on his arms.

"Are you okay?" He asked, his voice stifled by the ball he had almost curled into.

"Forget me, are _you_ okay? What happened? What was that noise?"

He slowly lifted his head up to look at his sister, revealing a swollen eye and a split in the skin across his right cheek where blood had started to pool.

"Oh... oh no. No."

"Janey, it's fine. I'm fine."

"No." She stood up and crept down the hall back to the bathroom where she grabbed a handtowel, which she quickly ran under the faucet for a few moments before returning and handing it to her brother. "Until I can find the first aid kit. I know we have one around here somewhere." Jane turned to head back out of his room when he stopped her.

"Janey." Her silhouette was frozen in his doorway, the light from the living room and the dim glow from the streetlights outside allowing him to see the messy lopsided bun her long hair was pulled into, and the fact that her whole body was shaking. It had to be either fear or rage. Perhaps both. With his sister, those emotions occasionally came hand in hand. "Come back here. I'm fine."

Her head turned, her chin meeting her shoulder as she peered at him with a pair of light eyes. She could still see remnants of the makeup on his face. She hadn't bothered to wash hers off yet either.

Padding back across the worn carpet, she seated herself on his bed, her feet dangling off of the edge next to his right temple. She stared out the window of his bedroom, her mind wandering off to places they could both be at that moment. She knew she would gladly settle for anywhere away from that town, away from their father. A mental image of them in the city and living it up was interrupted by a bump against her foot. When she looked down to the end of the bed, she noticed Keith had rested his head against her ankles.

Jane reached forward, gently ran her fingers through his hair and wished their mother was still with them.


	2. Chapter 2

The roller rink echoed with laughter and squeals - which were loud, but failed to drown out the Britney Spears track that was currently playing for the patrons to skate to. Keith had an earlier shift at the store that night and decided to visit his sister at work. Weaving his way through the crowds along the side of the rink, he slipped himself into a booth he knew was in his sister's section and peered around, looking for her as another waitress skated past his table.

Jane was good on her skates. That was one of the only things she liked about her job. The fact that it was at a roller rink and the waitresses had to wear skates. That and the tips. Keith knew she would much rather be dancing, but the only thing remotely related to dancing in that town that earned money was the gaggle of exotic dancers down at the Spotted Coat. And that certainly wasn't the kind of dancing his sister wanted to do.

Before he could react, his sister had slid into the booth across from him, dropping a large order of french fries on the table between them. "Hey, good timing. I'm on my break."

Keith grinned at her and reached for the ketchup at the end of the table. He could feel the wheels of her skates against the sides of his ankles and could see the thin sheen of sweat that was always apparent on her forehead while she was at work. They kept the rink lukewarm, it seemed, even in the middle of summer. She looked healthy though, and that was what mattered. The two of them had been working extra hours after school and on weekends to avoid going home. Their bosses didn't seem to mind.

"How was work?"

"The same," Keith responded, blandly. It was always the same. Irate customers, obnoxious children, stocking broken shelves...

"That bad?"

He nodded in response, his eyes glazing over and his right hand hovering over the fries that were already half gone.

"What are we going to do for our 17th birthday?" She asked suddenly, changing the subject. It seemed like something she had been waiting for the right moment to bring up.

"I don't know. What do you want to do?"

"I think... I think we should take a trip to the city."

"What?"

Keith watched Jane describe the plan that had been stewing in her brain, her hands moving around in front of her with each word. She liked to talk with her hands. He usually ribbed her about it but often found himself doing it recently because of her. Currently though, he was watching her right hand, which held a particularly perfect french fry.

"--then once we get off the bus, we can grab our stuff and then you--" She stuck the french fry towards him with the word "you" and was only mildly shocked when he leaned forward and snatched it from her grasp with his teeth. He chewed it triumphantly and shrugged.

"You were just taunting me with it. You should've eaten it before you started yapping."

Shaking her head, she chuckled before pushing herself to her feet and scooting the fries towards him. "Finish those. I have to go work."

As she skated off, Keith watched her stop beside a table full of giggling preteen girls and let his mind wander to her plans of them taking a trip to the city. Was it plausible? Could they do it? He knew their father wouldn't like it, but frankly, Keith didn't care. He was sure Jane didn't either.

He absently ate the rest of the fries, his eyes slowly grazing over the rink to his right and the tables to his left. He was fine with people-watching. He didn't want to go home too early. They never wanted to show up anymore before their father passed out for the night. When the last fry had been devoured, Keith noticed his sister headed towards the hallway in the back, towards the restrooms. Moments later, a guy who had been seated at one of her tables - a greaser with a sloppy tan in a fake leather jacket - had headed back there as well. He lost sight of them and found himself standing from the table and wandering through the crowds of people, past the other tables towards the wall so he could see down the hallway.

The first thing he noticed, out of everything that was happening, was that the bun her hair had been pulled into was coming loose. There were strands of dirty blonde hair in her face, which was twisted into an angry expression as she yelled at the guy who had followed her down the hallway. Keith obviously couldn't hear her because of the din around him, but he could easily see her rage. The guy said something back, sneered and pushed her back against the wall, one hand planted on the dirty, peeling wallpaper over her shoulder and the other toying with the bottom hem on the skirt of her uniform. Keith was about to charge over there until he froze. He and Jane had grown up together, they were twins. They had a bond that many siblings couldn't even understand.

He knew Jane could handle this.

And moments later he was proven correct. As much as he wanted to go over there and shove his fist into that crooked and spray-tanned nose, he stayed against the wall and watched as his sister introduced her right knee to the guy's crotch - in skates, no less. Jane shoved him backwards and skated out of the hallway, spotting Keith and grabbing his wrist on the way by.

"Screw this. My shift is over."

He had to jog to keep up with her as she pulled him to the back room behind the counter. Keith watched her as she retrieved her shoes from her locker and sat herself down on a chair in the corner. He was waiting for her to elaborate on what just happened, and when she didn't, Keith took it upon himself to prod her into it.

"Who was that assh--"

She cut him off as she unlaced her skates.

"His name's Gregory. He's a regular here. He's 22. He's a jerk."

"...I take it this isn't the first time he's come onto you."

Jane said nothing.

"Has he done anything... worse... to you?"

"No."

" _Janey, look at me_."

She hesitated before picking her head up and looking at him. "No, Keith. He hasn't."

"I... I'm just worried about you."

"I know," Jane nodded, slipping her shoes on and standing up. "You know I can handle myself."

"Yes. But that doesn't mean I don't worry about you."

"Keith, you know I'm older than you--"

"--by eight minutes! Don't hand me that."

Grabbing his wrist again, Jane led him out of the back room and towards the main entrance of the roller rink, slipping her arm into his once they got through the crowds. The air outside was cool and seemed to wake Jane up a bit. She shook her brother's arm, "We can talk about our birthday plans on the way home. We can take our time walking just to be safe."

"You don't think he'd be out yet? It's..." Keith moved his free arm up and looked at his watch. The second hand was stopped. "Damn. Watch is broken. Guess we'll just have to try our luck."

"Ha, luck." Jane's lips thinned. "When has luck ever been on our side?"

Keith said nothing. He just tightened the crook of his elbow in hers and huddled closer to her as they walked against the breeze back towards the place they were forced to call home.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to play: Spot the brief call-outs/nods to the Glitterati's Street Style outfits! ;)

Jane hadn't realized she had been biting her lip too hard while concentrating on unlocking and opening the front door in the quietest possible manner. She finally noticed her lip felt odd only after she held her skates close to her chest and crept across the living room, past her father who was out on the couch, to her room. In the dark, she managed to gently set the skates on the ground, slipping her shoes off beside them. Running a finger across her lip, she frowned at the small lump that had formed before dropping her bag from her shoulder to the bed. 

She reached behind her head and unzipped her uniform, shaking out of the sleeves and dropping the plain cotton dress to the ground. Stepping out of it, she reached over and grabbed a pair of beat up jeans from her dresser, pulling those on, along with a faded purple tank top. Her hair still smelled like greasy diner food, but at least her clothes didn't anymore.

A quick glance into her brother's empty bedroom as she had moved through the hallway to get to her own let her know that he wasn't sleeping - he hadn't even been in his room at all. She knew he was supposed to be home from work though. Keith told her he would be. It was their birthday.

Grabbing a small box from her bag, she moved into the hallway and peered around. The bathroom was empty, she hadn't seen him in the kitchen or dining room when she passed and he wasn't in his room. Jane paused at the entrance to their father's room. Looking through the windows of his bedroom and out into the backyard, Jane could see a flickering light from the old, thick plastic playhouse they used to spend hours in. Without any hesitation, Jane found herself creeping out through the living room and through the dining room to the back door, which she opened just as silently as she had managed with the front.

The wet grass felt cold between her toes and the breeze managed to displace a few strands of hair from the clip they were pulled into, but she wasn't too focused on any of that now. Just the light seeping through the closed faded blue shutters and door.

Jane knelt in front of the plastic house. They used to be able to just walk right in. Now on the rare occasions they went out there, they had to crawl inside.

She reached out and pulled the handle of the door, cracking it a pinch and peeking inside. Keith was there, appearing somewhat like a giant from a fairytale. The small plastic counter on his left was acting as his armrest as he read a book that was propped up on his stomach. She couldn't tell where the black sleeping bag he was nestled into ended and the black t-shirt he was wearing began, but his pale face and his dirty blonde hair against his ratty, old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pillowcase stood out enough for her eyes to lock onto in the dim light. The longer she stared, the more she could almost make out the scar that graced his right cheek. The tiny windowsill behind him and to his left held a candle that smelled strongly of pine and the way the flame danced around the miniature interior gave her a chill. She didn't want to stand outside any longer. Jane suddenly wanted to feel the safety of the playhouse - what they used to feel when they were little. Nothing could ever get them in there.

"Knock knock."

"Oh, hey."

Keith quickly sat up as she entered, setting his book down on the counter. He watched her weasel her way into the small house, hunkered over and shuffling in small steps. There was no room for her to sit on the other side of the counter (there was when they were five) so she planted herself, cross-legged, in front of him at the foot of his sleeping bag.

"Are you okay? You don't usually come out here unless you're feeling..." She shrugged. "Nostalgic? Lost in thought?"

"Yeah. Of course I'm okay."

He didn't tell her about the new bruise at the base of his neck.

Jane tilted her head, narrowing her eyes and reading him momentarily before giving up and handing him the box she had carried out with her.

"Happy birthday."

A smile crept across his lips as he took the box and opened it. There was a silver watch inside. A silver watch with a second hand that moved. The face was black with the numbers and hands in a darker shade of silver than the band. 

"I know you replaced the battery in your other one and it was fine, but even then it was still falling apart. I thought you might want something a little nicer." She paused, shaking her head. "I mean, it's still a knockoff. I can't afford anything too extravagant but I figured--"

"Janey."

"Hm?"

"Hush, it's perfect." He reached under the sleeping bag and blankets he had lugged out to the playhouse and pulled a larger box out, scooting it across the blankets to her. "Here." Once she picked it up, he began fiddling with the watch, slipping it around his wrist and studying the screen in the candlelight. He only paused and looked up when his sister found what was in the tissue paper. Keith had wanted to see her face when she realized what was in that box.

"Keith, these are--! They were so much though, why did you spend so much?"

"Try them on."

"I can't. You have to take--"

"Do you want me to force them on your feet? Try them on."

Jane was looking down at a pair of shoes she had been admiring for quite some time. They were flat, black ankle boots and whenever they passed the shoe store near the center of town, she always made a comment about how they reminded her of the shoes she used to wear to dance class when she was younger. There was a silver clasp on the front of both of them just like her old shoes as well. Jane ran her finger along the heel of the right shoe and looked up at her brother.

"You know these are just gonna make me want to dance again, right?"

"How is that a bad thing?"

"It's not... I just..." She trailed off, looking back down to the shoes. "You know who won't approve of that."

Jane felt a hand on her wrist and looked up to Keith, who was leaning towards her with a sly grin on his face. "Dad can't hold you back forever." 

She watched him lean back and she felt the spot on her wrist where his hand left suddenly grow cold. He reached under the small counter and pulled out a little white box, opening it and placing it between them.

"Happy birthday. I know it's not us in the city..."

Reaching into the box, Jane grabbed the chocolate cupcake closest to her and began to peel the wrapper off. "It's fine, Keith. As long as we're both here, it's a perfectly good birthday." With a mouthful of cupcake, Jane added, "I approve."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, enjoying their makeshift dessert picnic inside the plastic playhouse. They began to reminisce about their dance classes from when their mother was still alive when their chuckles were interrupted by multiple crashes. Then yelling.

Keith reached out, over the counter and pushed the shutters of the window on the south wall open. He leaned over the counter to watch and he could feel his sister inches away from his back, her chin hovering over his shoulder. They both stared, lips pursed and eyes wide. There were lights on in their house now. They could see the shape of their father, silhouetted in the dining room, arms flailing and screams drifting out into the backyard. Sometimes this happened, but never when they were present. They would come home from work and find family photos torn, frames broken, knick-knacks and souvenirs from family trips shattered on the ground.

Soon there would be nothing left.

"I'm not going back in there tonight," Jane whispered. "I can't look at that right now."

Keith said nothing, his eyes still locked on their house and the shadow roaming around inside from window to window.

Moving away from him, Jane sat with her feet under her, her gaze drifting from the house to her brother. She briefly noticed a splotch of something black and blue peeking out from the collar of his shirt, but he turned around and motioned to the pile of blankets and his sleeping bag before she could say something about it.

"You're welcome to stay out here. That's what I'm planning on doing."

 _It was a trick of the candlelight, right?_ Jane asked herself this in her head as she nodded to her brother and crawled into the mess of blankets he had been settled in earlier. _Right?_

Jane faced the wall of the playhouse, her hands under the balled up blanket that was acting as her pillow. She could feel Keith climbing back into his sleeping bag behind her.

"Thank you for the shoes, Keith."

"No problem. And thank you for my watch. Now I just need some fancy clothes to match it."

Turning over, Jane accidentally kicked Keith's right leg on the way.

Her brother groaned. "God, I forgot how brutal you are when you sleep. It's gonna be like those trips to the cabin when we were little where you kicked me mercilessly while you snored."

Jane let out a laugh in response."I'm not denying the kicking but _I don't snore_."

"Bull _shit_."

"Bull _true_."

Keith looked at her, cracked a slight smile despite the violent noises that had died down in their house and turned towards their source of light.

Her eyes hit his back again when he leaned up to blow the candle out. She thought she saw the colors again, but she kept telling herself it was just the lighting. It had to be.

It wasn't another bruise...

_And if it was he would tell me, right?_


	4. Chapter 4

The morning and afternoon on the day after their 17th birthday were both uneventful. It was a Sunday. Keith went to the store and Jane went to the roller rink. Keith had to clean up a display of soda that had fallen over and Jane had to get Gregory moved to a different seating area when he wouldn't leave her alone about how smooth her skin looked. Jane's shift was over at six p.m. - she stayed until nine-thirty. She had grabbed a burger on the way home and ate it as she walked, arriving at her house a little after ten.

She entered to find her father watching television, a can of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

"Hi," Jane said.

"Mmm." It was all he responded with. Better than the usual response of nothing at all, she figured.

"How was your day?" She asked, moving towards the hallway to head back to her bedroom. She stopped at the mouth of the corridor and looked back to her father, waiting for a response. She still said a few words to him here and there. As far as she knew, Keith never said a thing to him.

"I thought I told you not to put that shit on your face," he ignored her question completely and stared at her through the smoke from his cigarette with narrowed eyes.

It took Jane a moment to realize what he was talking about. "It's _chapstick_."

"I don't care what the hell it is. _Take it off, y'tramp_."

Turning away from him, Jane vanished into the hallway and entered her room, quickly shutting the door behind her. She dropped her skates on the floor and sat down on her bed, her gaze drifting towards the window to the street that ran past the front of their house. She could feel tears forming in her eyes - tears built up from the frustration she felt towards everything - Gregory, her father, the lack of anything in her life except work. She knew those tears were for her brother too. All day, her mind had kept returning to that thing on Keith's back... it had to be a bruise. A new one. Why didn't he tell her? Why couldn't their father just break more damn knick-knacks in the living room instead of taking out whatever was in his head on Keith?

Jane quickly wiped the tears away before they could fall. Crying wouldn't help anything. It felt like it was all she could do at this moment though; she was weak, powerless. She briefly wondered how different everything would be if their mother was still alive.

Dropping her chin to her chest, Jane caught sight of the shoes Keith had given her the day before. Within moments she had them on and was digging out the banged up portable CD player she took with her to work sometimes. Pretty much everyone she knew had MP3 players, but the CD player still worked and Jane had a hard time letting it go. She stood in front of her window, curtains open, streetlights streaming in and the door shut behind her. Inhaling deeply, her eyes drifted up to the crescent moon outside momentarily before shutting. She thought of their mother again.

With the new shoes on her feet and the headphones over her ears, Jane did something she hadn't done in years. She danced.

...

Keith could see the glow of the television through the living room window curtains as he walked up to the house. That was nothing new. When he slipped in and didn't see the top of his father's head poking over the back of the couch though, now that struck him as a little odd. He leaned over the couch, expecting to see his father sprawled out, asleep. But no. Nothing. The couch was bare.

He started to move towards the back hallway. Maybe he was in the bathr—

Keith’s breath caught in his throat as he rounded the couch and the hallway came into his line of sight.

His father was on the ground, legs and arms splayed out. There was blood seeping from the side of his head. From his ear, or a cut maybe, Keith couldn't tell. Beside him, the heavy ceramic ashtray he used when he smoked. There were cigarette butts around his form; the trash littered against the dirty carpet like someone had placed them there specifically for decoration.

"Janey?" Keith yelled. 

Nothing.

" _Janey?!_ "

Bounding over the body and down the hallway, Keith gave a passing glance to the bathroom and found nothing before stopping at the door to his sister's room. It was open. He froze at the entrance. He could see her, seated on the side of her bed with her back to him, staring out the window. Her hair, usually in a bun or a clip, was down and tangled, the ends reaching the small of her back. Keith could hear something in the silence. It took him a few moments to notice her headphones and her CD player on the ground, still blaring something he couldn't make out or recognize without the headphones on.

"What happened?" He murmured, passing through the doorframe into her room. He moved quietly across the carpet, stepping over the CD player as he made his way to her bed, to her. He stood beside where she sat for a few moments before he knelt down in front of her. He noticed she was wearing the shoes he gave her.

"Janey..."

He also noticed that her hair was hanging in front of her face and she had an arm around her stomach and a hand at her neck.

"Keith..." It came out in sort of an exhaled whisper, but he was just relieved to hear her say _anything at all_.

Reaching up, he pushed the hair from her face and almost shot to his feet at what he saw behind the curtain of dirty blonde he had shifted aside. His sister's lip was swollen. When he grabbed her hand from her neck and wrapped her fingers in his, he grew even angrier. Her neck. There were marks on it, red marks. Were those... _handprints_? And a cut on the left side?

He heard her choke back a sob and didn't hesitate pulling her down from where she sat on the bed to the floor, wrapping his arms around her. Her hair tickled his nose, but he was too distracted to care - staring across the surface of the bed to the open doorway, out into the hall where their father happened to be passed out. For different reasons than usual, this time. He could hear a ringing in his ears, along with the tinny sounds still emanating from the headphones and his sister's quiet cries. He could feel a rage bubbling up inside of him, along with his sister's racing heartbeat against his chest. As much as he wanted to tuck her into her bed and call the cops, he knew that would just lead to them getting placed into a foster home for a year - if the cops would even take their side. Their father was a master storyteller with friends on the town’s tiny police force. They were drinking buddies of his.

Keith moved his sister back, letting her rest against the bed. He gingerly swept her hair from her face.

"What happened?"

"I was... I was just _dancing_. In here. That’s it. He came in and chased me down the hall, throwing stuff and screaming... and... he..." She weakly motioned to her face and neck. "I grabbed his ashtray... and..."

"You bashed him over the head with it."

"Oops," she said, dryly.

That was the sister he knew and loved.

"Is he..." Keith trailed off.

"He's still alive."

His mind began racing around the options they suddenly had. He laid out scenarios, trying to figure out what would be the best for them at this point. They just turned seventeen. They were almost adults. Almost. But they wouldn't be recognized as such according to the law. Especially in a town like theirs.

"You need to pack anything up you want to bring with you. We're leaving this shithole forever. And we're leaving right now."

Keith stood and crossed the hall to his own room, glancing at his still-unconscious father on the way. He had felt a pang of sorrow for his father when he first saw what had happened, fearing maybe someone had broken into the house, but when he saw Jane and realized what had transpired, anything he felt had dissipated. He regretted that feeling even more when he entered his bedroom and took his work shirt off, peering over his shoulder at his bruised back in the mirror on top of the dresser.

He wasted no time grabbing a duffle bag and throwing clothes into it. He was going through the assortment of books, trinkets and change on top of his dresser when he felt a presence behind him. His shoulders tensed, but they quickly relaxed when he saw his sister in the mirror. She had set her bag of items to bring on his bed and was now standing behind him, peering downwards at his skin.

Keith felt her fingertips tracing the bruise down his back and turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were wide, her hair was still tangled around her shoulders and her other hand was at her neck, fingers absently grazing her collarbone.

Taking the hand from her neck, he pulled the band from around her wrist and brushed her hair out of her face, slipping around behind her to put her hair into as clean a bun as he could manage. He looked at her in the mirror ahead of them. Her lip looked a little less swollen, but her neck was still red, the skin around the cut puckered and raw. It relaxed him the smallest bit though, to actually see her face again.

"Come on, Janey. Let's go."


	5. Chapter 5

Pearl Allen didn't have a very good feeling about that evening and she wasn't sure why. Work had been fine that day, they had their normal amount of customers in the salon she owned and worked for, she had even made plenty of tips. But she felt uneasy mentally and that was making her stomach churn. Something was wrong and her mind kept running through things it might be as she swept the floor of the salon before heading upstairs to her apartment on the level above.

She couldn't place it. Not yet.

Pearl lived alone in the apartment. Her parents lived out in the country and her brother lived in the big city. Sometimes her boyfriend stayed over, but not that particular night. She wished he was though. She figured his presence would get her mind off the unsettling knot growing in her system. 

Seating herself on the gray, faux leather couch in her living room with a glass of iced tea in her hand, Pearl's gaze absently caught the pictures on the sofa table behind her. They were framed pictures of her family, photos of her with her boyfriend, photos of her and--

_Stephanie._

The pit in her stomach tightened at the sight of her and her old best friend, clinging to each other and in mid-giggle at a mini-golf course. They had been twenty years old then and Stephanie had been pregnant. She died in a car accident six years after that photo was taken.

Why did her unease intensify when she looked at that photo?

After she asked herself that question, the phone rang, shattering the silence that had surrounded her. With a quick glance to the picture once more, Pearl stood and grabbed the cordless handset on the end table from its charging cradle.

"Hello?"

The voice on the other end was one she recognized instantly. From the sound of it, Pearl connected it to her odd feeling of unease. It was someone she saw here and there around town, maybe at the grocery store or working behind the register when she stopped at the department store down the street. 

It was Stephanie's son.

"Miss Allen, I know it's late. I apologize for calling now but you're the only person who might actually believe us. We need to get out of here."

"Keith, honey, what is it? What's wrong?"

"I... it's a long story."

"Is your sister there? Are you two okay?"

"Janey's here..."

When he didn't continue, Pearl spoke up. "Both of you come to the back entrance of the salon. I'll wait for you there."

"Thank you."

Pearl hung the phone up and threw it on the couch, slipping on a pair of worn out sandals and stopping by the table of photos again to stare at the one of her and Stephanie. She could hear the way Keith's voice shook when he spoke. She briefly thought the unease had been Stephanie trying to warn her of whatever she was about to discover from the twins, but she shook the thought from her head and exited her apartment, bounding down the stairs towards the back of the salon. She pushed the door open and kicked a wooden block under the crack to keep it from shutting, then stepped out into the small back lot where her car was parked. Peering around the building, she waited for a few minutes and tensed up when she saw the faces of two pale figures almost jogging down the street towards the salon. They were both holding bags, both wearing hoodies with the hoods up - one was a checkerboard pattern of black and white, while the smaller figure wore purple.

She had seen Jane around as well; grocery store, post office, here and there. Pearl always said hello to the twins when she saw them and they always smiled brightly back and her and chatted with her for a bit. They reminded her of Stephanie. She remembered going with Steph to their dance recitals when they were little. Pearl always went with her because Stephanie's husband didn't care for dancing. When she died, he pulled the twins out of their dance classes. Pearl never liked him. Ever.

Shock hit her when they both stopped in front of her and said nothing, they didn't remove their hoods either.

"Tell me what's wrong."

"Can we go inside?" Keith motioned towards the back door. 

"Of course," she said, throwing her right arm out and herding them inside. She kicked the block out from under the door and pulled it shut, following them into the main interior area of the salon. They were both standing in the middle and watching her, their skin standing out in the darkness. She reached back and turned on a small lamp that sat on the main desk. She didn't want to turn on the overhead lights - those were way too bright at that time of night. She didn't want to bring too much attention to the salon around midnight, especially since she had no idea what the two of them were doing there. "Guys, tell me."

Keith reached out to his sister and moved her forward, stepping up behind her. Jane began to take her hoodie off, Keith following with his moments later.

The first thing Pearl saw in the halo of dim light from the lamp was Jane's swollen lip, next was her neck and after that she watched Keith pull his shirt up and turn around.

" _Murphy_." She almost spat his name, the name of Stephanie's husband and their father. She knew this had to be his doing. He never deserved Stephanie, he never deserved to have these kids. Pearl thought there was nothing that could make her dislike him more. Until now. "Give me the details."

Keith watched his sister sit down in one of the chairs before starting his tale at his father's usual drunken tirades then moving to the night Jane was trying on makeup. He was sure to mention that their father said Janey looked like a whore and the fact that he had a scar on his face now, due to his father's high school class ring. He was sure to mention the drunken tantrums against the items around their house and the fact that Keith had been in the wrong place at the wrong time - in the backyard listening to music - when his father was in the kitchen getting another beer. Keith mentioned that he had been bobbing his head and tapping his foot and his father came out and pulled him inside, screaming at him for something that wasn't even really dancing. That shifted into the fact that Jane had been dancing earlier that evening and their father found out. "I really don't know what he has against it. Or what he has against us... I just... I can't stand this anymore. _We_ can't stand this anymore. We just wanted someone to hear us out. We're leaving. We're going to the city."

Pearl sighed and reached out, putting her hand on Keith's back and leading him to where his sister sat in one of the chairs. She grabbed their fingers in hers and let her eyes drift between the two as she inhaled deeply. Her dark skin against their hands made them appear even more like ghosts to her. Part of them died with their mother, she always thought that.

"Kay. Jay," she used the nicknames Stephanie used to use when they were children. Pearl remembered the kids bolting back into house at the sound of Stephanie's voice: _Kay! Jay! Snacktime!_

"Your father didn't like dancing because your mother loved it. She was a dancer herself. She wanted all of you to move to the city so she could pursue her dreams of turning it into a profession. Murphy was afraid it was taking over her life. He ignored it, ignored her when she talked about it. Never moved to the city, obviously. He said he had so much here in town. A job, stability, friends - his drunk pals most likely. He never wanted to take any chances. 

They started fighting close to when she died. She wanted so much more than what you all had and she said it was just in their reach, that your family just needed to take this one chance. He wanted none of it. He started drinking more. Then the car accident..." Pearl paused to give their hands a quick squeeze. "It was the perfect chance for him to get rid of any trace of her dreams. He took you two out of classes, took the trophies and ribbons from your rooms, I bet. Got rid of your dancing shoes too, no doubt. And you two. You look just like her. I’m sure looking at you makes him think of everything that happened. I really don't blame you two for wanting to leave. I'm just sorry that it had to come to this to make it happen."

She wasn't sure she wanted the answer to her next question, but she knew it would be a vital part of the puzzle that would be getting them to the city. "How did you guys leave the house without him knowing?"

"I knocked him out with his ashtray after this," Jane croaked, motioning weakly to her head.  
Pearl wanted to blurt, _Should've finished the job_ \- but figured that wasn't the nicest way of dealing with things. She scolded herself momentarily for thinking it and gently dropped their hands. "Here's what we're gonna do."

Keith seated himself in the chair next to his sister and placed his hands in his lap. He knew Pearl would be able to help them out, he just had no idea how much she planned to assist. As she shared the thoughts that had been stewing in her brain since they had arrived and told her they were going to the city, Keith had to blink away a brief threat of tears. He reached to his right and grabbed his sister's hand. 

_We might actually be getting out of this dead end, Janey. We might be taking your trip to the city._


	6. Chapter 6

Pearl had led Jane upstairs to the only bedroom in her apartment and told her to rest for a bit while she took care of Keith. She told them if they were going to leave town and become a set of twins that authorities weren’t looking for, they would need to change some things. She was sure Murphy would call this incident in, Pearl just wasn’t sure if it would be a case of his kids being delinquent and beating him over the head or an exaggerated sob story about how his darlings ran away – maybe even a fake kidnapping.

“Almost finished, hon.”

Keith was seated in one of the salon chairs in front of her, his back to the mirror. She had been working on his hair by the light of the dim lamp she had switched on earlier, but that was all she needed. Pearl could do this with her eyes closed.

A couple more snaps of the scissors and Keith watched as Pearl looked from the left side of his face to the right and then leaned down, grabbing the arms of the chair and spinning him around.

Even in the lack of lighting, he could see that she had lightened his hair drastically. It was a light ash blonde, a few shades away from platinum. His bangs, which were normally just a mess of dirty blonde locks he pushed out of his face, were now cut perfectly, either side at a slight angle downwards.

It took him a few moments, a few turns of his head back and forth, but a smile crossed his face. It was different. But it was just the kind of different he needed. They were starting over.

“I love it.”

“Good. And if anyone has any photos of you they come looking for you with, they’re gonna pass right over any light and styled blondes. No worries.” She patted his shoulder with her comb. “Go get your sister. And you get some rest. You two have a bus to catch when the sun comes up.”

He nodded and slid out of the chair.

“Keith, do you need me to spot you any cash for the bus?”

“Oh, no. No, Miss Allen. We should be fine. We’ve been saving up. We weren’t really sure for what – the future in general, I guess – but now we know. We should be set for a bit.”

He had halted next to the chair as he spoke and was standing in a pile of dirty blonde locks. Pearl was trying to hide a wide smile at his resolve. She was also trying to hide tears that threatened to bubble up. They were so much like Stephanie.

“Thank you though. You’ve done so much for us already.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, Kay.” She waved him towards the hallway in the back. “Go on.”

He returned with a groggy and still half-asleep Jane, who he led to the chair, waiting until she sat down before retreating towards the hallway and back to Pearl’s apartment. He stopped though, in the door frame, and turned back, peering into the salon. Pearl was standing over Jane, looking at her reflection in the mirror. His sister was awake now. Keith saw her nod. He heard her voice.

“Cut it all off.”

“You sure, Jay?”

“Yes.”

Keith vanished into the dark corridor, pressing his back to the wall momentarily and shutting his eyes. His sister hadn’t gotten a haircut in years. They were really doing this.

They were really leaving.

He leaned back out to peek into the salon. Pearl’s hands were at his sister’s hair, her left holding it at the base of Jane’s neck and her right with a pair of scissors.

“Kay, go to sleep,” she called back to him without even looking at him.

“Sorry, Miss Allen.” With a grin, Keith slipped away, hearing the loud snip of scissors as his foot hit the first stair up to Pearl’s apartment.

He didn’t think he would be able to sleep and he figured he would be staring at the bedroom ceiling until Pearl finished with his sister’s hair, but when his pale cheek hit the pillow, he was asleep in an instant.

“Keith?”

He could feel someone shaking him gently and cracking his eyes open a pinch allowed him to see a head of short ash blonde hair against a night sky. Blinking furiously for a few moments, Keith pushed himself to a sitting position and looked to his left. 5:06 am. Ahead of him, his twin sister sat on Pearl Allen’s bed, at the foot of it, her hands in her lap now and her back to the window of Pearl’s bedroom.

She reached out to him and grabbed a lock of newly dyed hair that rested against his cheek, feeling it between her fingers. He found himself doing the same thing to her, eyes wide at the fact that the ends of the piece he was holding stopped at her jaw line. It previously fell to the middle of her back, at least.

Keith pulled his hand back and wrapped his fingers around the wrist of her hand that hovered near his face.

“You ready?”

She nodded slowly, her light eyes drifting from his face to the clock. “Can we… can we make a quick stop first?”

…

They had thanked her again and said their goodbyes to Pearl, who told them not to hesitate to call if they needed anything – even if it was just someone to talk to – and slung their bags over their shoulders, setting off down the street towards the main thoroughfare of the town, where the bus station was located. They made Jane’s quick stop, which Keith approved of and knew they needed for the last time, which is where they stood now, hands in their pockets, bags on the ground and warm hoods up over their new haircuts and their bruises and scars.

The pale light of the predawn slipped over their mother’s gravestone, bathing it in a soft blue glow.

Keith and Jane said nothing to her. Nothing to each other. Not out loud.

They both knew what the other was thinking and they knew that their mother was aware as well.

That was all they needed.

Keith reached out and pulled his sister close to him. He had seen the sleeve of her purple hoodie raise to her face, where she wiped her eyes quickly. “Hey, this is what she would want, right?” He whispered into the violet fabric, where her ear was and shook her gently. “Come on.” Keith picked up their bags and led her out of the cemetery, where the first rays of the rising sun fell over them.

“I’m done with this place,” Jane croaked, kicking a pebble down the broken asphalt.

“We both are. We’re never coming back. Sound good?”

“The best.”

She took her bag from his shoulder, thanking him and following him into the bus station where they purchased tickets without any incident. Jane was almost surprised at how simple this had been so far. Was something actually working out for them?

Waiting for the bus seemed to be the worst part of that morning. They had purchased the tickets roughly an hour before the bus was supposed to board and leave town, but it seemed so much longer than that to the twins. They sat on a bench near the window of the bus station, peering outside every few minutes. They were afraid they would see their father storming up the street with his cop buddies, or maybe Gregory coming to try to claim Jane once and for all – where he could keep her barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen while he watched sports all day. Both brother and sister sat on the hard wooden bench for that hour, shoulders pressed together, lips thinned and heads down except for the moments they peeked out the window. Their minds were racing around all the possible things that could go wrong.

Jane, in particular, was afraid. She kept picturing that ashtray hitting their father’s head. The one she had been holding in her hand. It replayed itself over and over again in her mind. Her thoughts jumped to the night Gregory had cornered her in the bathroom at the roller rink -- the night Keith hadn’t been there – when he pushed her up against one of the sinks and began violently pressing his lips into hers. She could taste the alcohol on them. Alcohol mixed with bile. She had kicked him in the shin with the front brake of her skate and got out of there as fast as she could. The image she still had clearly in her head, of her flying down the corridor back to the rink was replaced with the night she ran down the hallway away from their father. She pictured the ashtray again, slamming into his head—

Jane’s hand was suddenly enveloped in a set of warm fingers.

“You’re shaking.”

Her eyes opened and moved down to where Keith’s hand was holding hers in between them, then they moved up to his face, partially shaded by his hood. The concern marring his features almost caused her heart to skip a beat. She didn’t realize she had been reacting to her thoughts in such a physical fashion.

“Janey, what are you thinking about?”

Luckily, the bus had pulled up outside, saving her from having to answer. She stood up, yanking him off of the bench with her, and hurried outside with him in tow.

They sat in the backseat of the bus, on the right side. Keith let Jane in the seat before him. He told her it was so she could look out the window, which was partially true. He also wanted to make sure he could keep an eye on the people around them.

Keith could still see her shaking slightly. He didn’t mention it again.

Her frame stilled only when the bus finally pulled away from the station.

“We did it,” he heard Jane whisper when the bus finally hit the highway.


	7. Chapter 7

Their hoods hadn’t come off until a couple hours into the ride and even then they were careful about who saw them. Two teenagers with almost fresh injuries on their faces weren’t something they really wanted to draw attention to at this point in their journey. Keith stared out the window at the passing trees, looking over his sister’s head which was resting on his side. His right arm was around her, his fingers absently toying with the folds of the hoodie she had taken off and placed over herself as a blanket. 

Keith hadn’t thought much yet about what they were going to do when they arrived at the city – he knew they had both been focused on just getting out of their hometown. Now that that hurdle was hopefully cleared, they could move on to other matters. 

He knew that as long as they had each other, things would be alright. He felt complete with Jane around. Safe. Strong. He knew she felt similarly. They were all they had at this point – each other.

She stirred against him and pushed away from him towards the window, her back releasing an audible crack. Keith removed his arm from around her and watched as she snuggled back against her seat, settling under her makeshift blanket once more.

“Our names.”

“Hnngh?” Jane forced a questionable grunt to her brother’s sudden outburst.

“We need to change our names. If we’re worried they’re gonna come look for us… they’re looking for Keith and Jane, right?”

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes with one of the arms of her hoodie and squinted momentarily before widening her gaze at him. It was true, if anyone bothered to come look for the two of them, those were the exact names they’d be asking about.

“But… Mom’s parents.”

“I know. Keith and Jane.” He looked past her, to the line of passing trees again. Breaks in the trees where they were replaced by buildings kept showing up as he watched the scenery. They were getting closer to the city. “I mean, we might be able to keep them somewhat but…” He trailed off, unsure of where to go.

“Rrrrrr.” Jane made another unintelligible noise and sunk in her seat.

He continued to stare past her, his eyes glazing over. He wasn’t sure how long had passed before his sister murmured. 

“Kerith.”

“Huh?”

“Kerith. You can be Kerith.”

“You just added an R to my name.”

He watched his sister shrug and turn back towards the window. When he was sure she didn’t have her eyes on him anymore, he silently mouthed the name a few times. It rolled off of his tongue in a surprisingly comfortable way. 

“So does that make you… Janer?”

Keith heard his sister snort, which trailed into a weak giggle. He found himself chuckling with her and felt a slight weight lift off of his shoulders. At least they were laughing, even if it was only a bit.

“No.” Looking away from the window, Jane turned back to him, her mouth working around sounds she wasn’t making. A small laugh preceded her next word. “Jarne?”

They both chuckled again. Jarne was completely awkward but Keith found himself turning it over and over in his head. Jarn. Jarne. 

“Jaryn.”

“Jaryn?” She repeated back to him.

“With a Y.” He shifted back and forth in his seat, putting his hands up as if he were an action star about to perform some wicked karate chop. “It’ll look cooler that way when you write your name.”

Jane grinned, reaching out and pushing his hands down.

“So?” He leaned closer to her and peered out the window, looking ahead down the road as he asked her about the name. “Is that a yes?”

“Is Kerith a yes?”

“I like it.”

“Then Jaryn’s a yes too.”

Keith motioned to his sister with a tilt of his head towards the window. When she looked out of it, he could hear her gasp slightly. The city was on the horizon, the sun hitting the tall buildings and reflecting off of the windows in a brilliant orange hue. 

His eyes moved from the skyscrapers to Jane, his heart sinking slightly at the prospect of their name changes. He knew it would take awhile to go from Janey to Jaryn, but he knew his sister and he knew she would always respond to Janey if it managed to slip from his lips.

Jaryn. Kerith. Jaryn and Kerith. Kerith and Jaryn. 

… 

The first thing they did after getting off of the bus was check a map posted outside of the station. According to said map, there was a motel about three blocks away from where they stood. They knew they wouldn’t be able to stay in a motel forever, but they figured it was a good way to get their bearings for a night or two, at least.

Pinecrest Inn was cheap and definitely looked it from the outside, nestled in between two office buildings near the Takamoto Plaza stop of the city’s subway system. 

As they passed the underground entrance to the subway, Jane grabbed her brother and pointed to it, commenting on how they would need to ride it. Neither of them had been on, let alone seen, a subway system in person. Keith smiled and pulled her into the lobby of the Pinecrest Inn.

A round man with a greasy beard and a head of salt and pepper hair stared at them. “Room?”

“Please,” Keith responded, letting go of his sister and shifting to the desk with a sudden air of maturity. 

“Two people?” He waved a hand to Jane. “You and your… girlfriend.”

Jane turned from where she had been looking out the window to the front desk, sporting a pair of wide eyes that matched her brother’s.

“That’s my _twin sister_.”

He grunted. “Couldn’t tell with all that hair hanging in front of yer faces.” The man began punching things into an ancient computer system in front of him.

“Name?”

“Kerith,” he responded instantly.

The man waited, staring at the blonde with an expression of boredom on his face. “Last name?”

Keith froze. Last name. Why didn’t they think of a last name? He sure couldn’t give him their real last name. The motel was close to the bus station, it could be one of the first places hit is anyone was searching for them. He inhaled deeply, preparing to drop the first thing that came to mind when a voice cut him off. It was Jane.

“Robus. That’s Kerith Robus. I’m Jaryn.”

“Weird names.”

“Yes, _original names_.” Jane stepped up to the counter and eyed the man’s nametag that sat crooked on his faded plaid shirt. “ _Bob_.”

Once they were checked in and wandering down the hall towards their room, Keith tossed a glance behind him before peering sideways to his sister. “Robus?”

“It means strength in Latin... or something.” She hoisted her bag further on her shoulder, fingering the room key in her hand. “See, I learned something in school.”

Keith could feel a grin spread across his face. “Good choice, Jan— _Jaryn_.”

Their room was small and dimly lit, even with the two lamps switched on. The color scheme was a dirty beige and blue and dustier than they expected a motel room to be. It looked like no one had stayed in that particular room for months. A twin size bed sat with a busted headboard against one wall, a small table beside it and a couch across from it. The couch looked old and used. 

He sat down on it, placing his bag next to him. His backside sunk into it. And sunk. And sunk.

“Well, then.”

Jane smiled thinly at him, not surprised at the fact that she sunk into the mattress of the bed for a few long moments. The furniture was visibly very old.

“Are you sure you don’t want the bed?”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

“Since you’re taking that one for the team,” Jane started, jabbing a thumb towards the small chamber near the front door of their room, “you can take the first shower.” 

“Oh my god, you don’t have to tell me twice.” Keith was already up from the couch (which proved to be a feat in itself), tearing the hoodie and his shirt off over his head. He dropped them to the worn carpet and ran into the bathroom, vanishing from Jane’s view. She heard the water start and stared across from where she sat to the couch. She knew Keith took showers religiously. One every night. He missed the previous night and they both smelled like the bus ride, hair dye and sweat.

She stood from the foot of the bed and reached over to pick his bag up, carrying it to the bathroom and stepping past the door he left open. His clothes had been discarded on the ground and he was already in the shower. She could see his silhouette behind the curtain, scrubbing furiously at his arms with the provided and tiny bar of soap. 

“Brought your clothes,” she dropped the bag on the closed lid of the toilet and heard his thanks somewhere in the back of her mind. She had been distracted by the sight of herself in the large bathroom mirror. 

Slowly unzipping her hoodie, she turned her head from left to right, her eyes rolling over the bruises on her neck. Her hair didn’t cover them anymore.

With a deep inhale, Jane quickly moved out of the bathroom, away from the mirror and fell back onto the bed, curling up with her head on the flat pillows. She shut her eyes tight and pulled her knees up to her chest. They were in the city now. She could go to the window and see the skyscrapers and hustle and bustle on the street below. But she felt like nothing was fixed. Her neck hurt. They had a finite amount of money. The motel creeped her out and she was sure someone would be on their tail concerning their father sooner or later.

When Keith emerged from the bathroom in a simple pair of black pants and a white t-shirt, rubbing a towel over his wet hair, he stopped where the room opened up. 

His sister was in a fetal position on the bed with her eyes shut. He couldn’t tell if she was asleep or just lost in her thoughts but he knew he had to get her out of the room either way. They were in the city now. It was time to get their minds out of the past.

Crawling onto the bed, he collapsed in front of her and began poking her cheek repeatedly like he did when they were younger and she was playing with a toy he wanted a turn with. 

“Janey.” Poke. “Janey.” Poke. “Janey.”

“Mmm.”

“What’s wrong? Come on. Go get a shower and we can go explore. Get something to eat. Ride the subway. Do something.” 

She didn’t move.

Keith hesitated for a few moments and when he realized she wasn’t moving, he slid out of the bed and wrapped his hands around her ankles, pulling her from her curled up state. “I will drag you off of this bed and throw you in the bathtub if I have to.”

Jane weakly kicked her feet from his grasp and rolled off of the bed, finally removing her hoodie all the way. “Fine.”

His eyes followed her as she dug through her bag and pulled out clothes and continued to trail her as she shifted listlessly towards the bathroom. Keith followed her. He could tell something was wrong with her. He knew she was thinking about the place they had left behind. They were supposed to leave it behind forever. 

He stood in the doorway of the bathroom and watched her at the sink. She was studying her bruises again, leaning over the sink to get a closer look. As she did that, Keith caught a flash of black and blue where her shirt rode up her back.

“Janey.”

“Hmm?”

Leaning forward, he took two fingers and placed them on her skin at the small of her back. “What’s this?”

He could see her flinch visibly in the mirror at his touch.

Keith’s mind was a sudden jumble of rage and confusion, but he didn’t show it on his face. He calmly stared at her reflection in the mirror ahead of them. She stared back at him, her breathing getting heavier. 

“Gregory,” she finally said.

“When?”

“A couple days ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Keith suddenly wanted to get back on the bus, take it back to their hometown, find that bastard and shove his head in one of the grimy toilets at the roller rink. Over and over again. Perhaps pushing him too hard against the faded and cracked porcelain.

“It was nothing. I was fine. Everything was fine.”

“What did he do?”

“It was the sink. He…” She looked down at the sink ahead of them. It was almost on the same level as the one in the bathroom at the roller rink. “…pushed me back against it and tried to… I kicked him in the shin with my skate and left.”

“You didn’t tell _anyone_?”

“Who was I supposed to tell? No one could do anything. No one cared.”

“What about your brother? You don’t think he cared?”

Jane didn’t respond. Keith removed his fingers from the small of her back and lifted her shirt up a few inches. The bruise spread upwards and looked as if it was yellowing around the edges. He released a sigh that hit her neck and caused her to look back up to his reflection in the mirror.

“Get cleaned up. We’ll go get dinner.”

“I’m sorry,” she blurted.

“For what?” He stopped at the door to turn and look back at her.

“For not telling you.”

“Janey, we only have each other. You know I’m here for you. I figure it’s the same the other way around. That’s what siblings do, you know? We have to look out for each other, keep each other safe.”

She nodded.

He motioned to the shower. “Now clean yourself up, _Jaryn_.”

“Will do, _Kerith_.”

He shut the bathroom door behind him and wandered over to the window of their motel room. The people below moved about, tending to their business and living their own lives. He knew that they would have to fall into that routine if they wanted to stay here, and they would. But Keith – Kerith – he couldn’t keep his mind from racing back to that hellhole and finding Gregory. He couldn’t keep his mind from picturing himself taking Gregory’s face and smashing it into the same sink that he shoved Jane into. 

In an attempt to erase the thoughts from his head, he sat himself on the sinking couch and began to put on a pair of his old, ratty boots. It was time to find something to eat. They were in the city. There had to be hundreds of restaurants out there. Hundreds of activities to take part in.

Hundreds of ways to form a new beginning.


	8. Chapter 8

Their bruises faded over the next few months. The money they had saved up plus what they were making at their new jobs was enough for them to pay the month-to-month rent of a small studio apartment. It was only a little bigger than the motel room they had stayed in when they arrived at the city, but it was something.

They both worked at the Lakewood Avenue Diner, Jaryn as a waitress and Kerith as a busboy. Their hair had grown out, the color had faded. Jaryn could look at herself in a mirror without thinking of their father or Gregory. Kerith never found her curled up anymore. He hadn’t had to pull her out of an emotional slump in a good few months. She was smiling more. He was smiling more. They their spent free time at the library where Jaryn began flipping through fashion magazines. She and Kerith would sit at one of the tables in the corner sometimes, ragging on some of the latest trends and falling in love with some of the others.

They would pass a dance studio on the way home from the library. Jaryn would always stop and peek inside. Kerith would have to wrap his fingers around her wrist and pull her away from it. He was always disappointed at having to do that. They didn’t have the money for her to attend classes though.

“You still have the skill, Jare,” he would say to her. “You just need to discover it again.”

More months crawled by. The diner was always busy. They were always busy. Jaryn made good tips, which she shared with her brother. Kerith got the flu in the winter and Jaryn took care of him. They both had to take a week off of work. Jaryn twisted her ankle in the spring while bounding down the stairs of the Boggy Gardens subway station. She was on crutches for two weeks. No one ever came to their door asking about Keith and Jane.

It was a huge relief.

The first day of summer came along and Kerith was cleaning a table at the diner when he felt a lock of his hair being tugged. Spinning around, he came face-to-face with his twin sister, who had a smile on her face that was wider than any smile he ever remembered seeing on her.

“Whoa. Okay.” Kerith wiped his hands on his apron and moved them to his hips. “Spill.”

“I got a second job cleaning that dance studio up the street.”

“Huh?”

“They needed someone to clean up the studio every night—“

“You’re a janitor?”

Jaryn’s lips thinned. “I am. But.” She stressed this. “But. They said when I’m done cleaning I can use the space to practice before I close up.”

A smile that rivaled his sister’s plastered itself across his lips. He had been trying to help her find a way to get back into dancing. They couldn’t afford classes, they couldn’t afford renting anywhere for her to practice in and their apartment was much too small.

“Well, that seems like something to go out and celebrate,” Kerith said, glancing at the overly gaudy chrome clock on the wall of the diner. He knew Jaryn wasn’t on the schedule for that night and he was getting off work in twenty minutes. “Wait for me.”

…

Summer passed. Every single time Jaryn used the studio, something else would come back to her. Some muscle she forgot she had would get stretched, her breath wouldn’t leave her as quickly, she could feel her stamina coming back. Sometimes she would sit in the middle of the room, on the scuffed wooden floor, and think of the studio her and Kerith went to as children. She would think of their mother watching them.

Some nights Kerith would stop by and lean back against the mirror, watching her do what they used to do all the time as kids. Sometimes she would ask him to join her.

He never did.

Part of him was embarrassed. He was sure he had forgotten everything he ever learned. He kept telling her she still had the skill and just needed to discover it again, but he never followed his own advice. There was another part of him that thought that the first dance step he performed would bring his father out of nowhere to scream at him and take his anger out on him like he did almost a year earlier.

Had it been that long?

Their 18th birthday passed. They bought a pack of cigarettes because they were now allowed to by law and went down to the beach, where they sat in the sand and tossed them, one by one, into the ocean. Their father smoked and they hated the stench.

That year flew by, acquaintances came in and out of their lives, Jaryn was still working two jobs, Kerith was taking a free art class at night in the recreation center down the street. They turned nineteen.

Still, no one came searching for Keith and Jane.

Their apartment, which started out as a plain thing with drab off-white walls and gray carpet, had turned into a rainbow of color in the time since they had moved in. Jaryn and Kerith had been taping fashion spreads and ads to the walls, Kerith hung some of his drawings up, Jaryn hung paper lanterns from the ceiling.

They had a lopsided dining room table with one matching chair and a stool. Their coffee table was a piece of painted plywood tied to four branches they picked up from the park. They had no couch, only vinyl beanbags. They only had one bedroom, one queen-sized bed with mismatched sheets and blankets on it. They shared it. Jaryn kicked Kerith in her sleep at least once almost every night. It was what put him to sleep. It was how he knew she was there, how she was safe.

They turned twenty.

On their 20th birthday, they went to their favorite Chinese restaurant. They both wore black with green accents. Kerith in a pair of black pants, a black t-shirt and a green vest. Jaryn in a pair of black leggings and a long, black tank top with a green scarf around her waist. He was wearing the watch she gave him for their 17th birthday. She was wearing the dance shoes he had given her.

Her hair was long enough to be pulled back into a low ponytail that hung over her shoulder, which she was fiddling with as she looked over the menu.

“I don’t even know why you’re looking at that. You always get the buffet.”

“True.” Jaryn shut the menu and snapped her head towards the buffet, staring it down like a vulture watching its prey.

“It’s calling you.” Kerith shut his own menu and followed her gaze to it. “Jaryn. Jaaaaarynnnn.” His view of the buffet was blocked suddenly by three bodies that moved closer to his table. He recognized them instantly.

“Hey Kerith!” The one in the front said, holding his hand out in front of him.

“Hey!” Kerith stood up and grabbed the guy’s hand.

Jaryn’s eyes had moved from the buffet, straight to the guy in the front, then back to the one hovering behind him and the female on his left.

“How are you guys?” Kerith asked, greeting them all with a grin.

“Doing good. Good. How about you?” The guy in the front said. “I take it this is the lovely sister we always hear about?”

Jaryn shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Something was off about these three but she wasn’t sure what.

“It is.” Kerith turned to look at her. “Jaryn, this is Steve, Elya and Tommy. I met them in that art class I took awhile back.”

She forced a smile. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise!” The guy in the back said as Steve eyed Kerith.

“Listen, you guys should chill with us sometime. I think you’d fit right in.”

Jaryn watched as her brother talked to the three for a few minutes. Maybe it was because she and Kerith didn’t really associate with other people on a normal basis unless it was for work. Maybe it was because it was their birthday and these three were suddenly a part of it. Maybe it was because they were standing in between her and the buffet. But something was off. She forced another smile and a half-hearted wave as they walked off and then stared her brother down once he seated himself again.

“I don’t like them.”

“What?”

“There’s something… I don’t know…”

“You just never liked making friends. I know.”

Jaryn dropped the subject, knowing she wasn’t going to get anywhere with it now and stood from her seat, weaving through tables and dodging waiters to get to the buffet. She wasn’t going to wait for her never-ending birthday meal any longer.

…

As they strolled down the street, leaning against each other shoulder-to-shoulder for support and complaining about how full they were, Kerith and Jaryn planned to plant themselves in their beanbags when they arrived back at their apartment. They planned to watch game shows on their old television and eat chocolate cupcakes once they had room in their stomachs.

That wasn’t going to happen as soon as they thought it would though.

Between their favorite Chinese restaurant and the streets that led back to their apartment, there was a bridge that spanned a river. There was a large walking path down the center, between the streets. It was the same walking path they took on the way to the restaurant and it was blocked now by a huge crowd. Kerith and Jaryn could hear the crowd cheering and snaking in and out between the cheers, they could hear music.

“We could take the subway and get around this mess,” Kerith suggested, tugging her elbow, which was locked with his.

Jaryn didn’t respond. She was meandering towards the crowd, dragging Kerith along when he didn’t manage to pull his arm from hers in time.

The crowd appeared to be forming a circle around something, or someone, Jaryn realized as they got closer. Peeking over the heads and hands of the crowd, she spotted a man who had to have been somewhere around their age. He had on a fedora and a matching suit, the brilliant white shade of the clothing almost glowing against his skin.

He was dancing.

Jaryn’s eyes widened and she instantly began to bob her head up and down as she caught the beat of the music. Kerith tightened his arm in hers and watched the man in the center.

When he was done dancing (and done bowing to all the screams and claps the erupted when the song ended), a redheaded female passed him, smirked and rolled her eyes at him and then stopped in the center of the circle. She straightened a pair of red suspenders out, cracked her neck from side to side and another song started.

She danced too.

Kerith’s gaze moved from the redhead to his sister, who was practically mesmerized. Jaryn looked like a kid again; excited and hopeful. He knew she was still dancing in the studio more than a few nights a week. He still watched her sometimes. She was elegant and graceful. She had a gift that Kerith knew she wanted to share somehow.

Turning back to the center of the circle, Kerith asked himself: _Is this the way she should do it?_

He then wondered exactly what “this” was. Were they all just here dancing for fun? Was it some sort of street competition? In the few years they had spent in the city, this was the first they had ever come across something of this sort.

The redhead finished and a blonde guy in giant goggles took her place. Kerith could hear his voice over the yells and claps. He let his eyes sweep around the circle as the blonde started dancing. Everyone was smiling and watching the blonde guy move with the beat. Everyone except one person. This person wasn’t looking at the dancer in the center, he was looking towards Kerith. He was looking next to Kerith, he was looking at the girl beaming beside Kerith.

Leaning against her, he whispered into her ear, “Come on, Janey. We need to go.”

Her smile vanished, but she followed him out of the crowd and towards the subway station.

Kerith had memorized the face that was staring at his sister. The man didn’t look too dangerous. He was tall and lithe, with pair of white Wayfarers on top of a head of blue hair. His face looked solemn, peaceful in a way. But the way he had been staring made Kerith want to get Jaryn far away from him. She never had good luck with the males of their species.

They’d probably never seen the guy again, but Kerith had taken a mental picture of that face and filed it away, just in case.


	9. Chapter 9

Jaryn returned home from the diner after a late shift and found a note from her brother. This was first time she had ever found such a thing in the apartment and as simple as it was, it made her uneasy.

_J—_

_Went out with Steve and the others. Be back later tonight._

_Love you, K_

She read the note over and over again, flipping it over and looking at the back of the paper before turning it over and reading it one more time. Jaryn wasn’t sure how she felt in relation to the note. He had never gone out without her, unless it was to work. Occasionally, he stopped by the store or the library by himself to pick something up, but never anything like this.

Jaryn left the note on the lopsided dining room table and exited their apartment, her mind spinning at the evening’s turn of events. Before she realized where her feet were taking her, she was stopped in front of the dance studio and the key to unlock it was already out of her pocket and in her hands. There had been no classes that day. There was nothing for her to clean or straighten up inside. But somehow that scuffed wooden floor had snuck into her system and almost called to her. 

Was she angry at Kerith for leaving her alone? For going out with the acquaintances he had that clearly made her uncomfortable?

No. He was a big boy. He could take care of himself. 

Was she bitter at being left alone?

No, she enjoyed time by herself every now and then.

So what was it?

Her feet shuffled across the wooden floor as she stopped in front of the sound system. A disc was in there from the previous days classes. It was Lady Gaga. Jaryn had been growing quite fond of Lady Gaga in the previous few months – her style, her message, her songs. Her music made Jaryn forget everything. It made her feet want just to move.

The shadow of a smile crossed her face at the fact that someone left had their disc here the night before. Lucky her.

Starting the music, Jaryn looked at herself in the giant mirror that spanned the north wall of the room. She saw gray leggings, a baggy purple tank top and her favorite pair of dance shoes. There were dark circles under her eyes and her hair was a tangled mess, but none of that mattered now. She nodded to herself and began to dance like she had so many nights before.

Song after song went by on the album – it might have even started over - she wasn’t sure how many she had been through and lost herself in when the studio door quietly opened. She had been in a spin and came to a dead halt when she opened her eyes and finally saw something out of place around her – it was a splotch of bright blue in her field of vision. Her right foot screeched against the wood as she stopped.

“C-can I help you?” She stammered, breathing heavily.

“I knew you looked like a dancer,” the newcomer said. 

Jaryn’s face twisted into a mess of confusion and frustration. “ _What?_ ”

“Sorry,” the man shook his head and reached his hand out in front of him, towards her. Jaryn noted the impeccable polish on his nails. “Oblio.”

She put her hands out to her sides and shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sweaty, sorry.” It was more of a mechanism to not have to shake this strange person’s hand, but there was some truth to it as well.

Jaryn was surprised when Oblio reached out and grabbed one of her hands, shaking it gently. “I’m a dancer too. I’m not afraid of a little sweat.”

She could feel her pale cheeks flush somewhat and she wasn’t sure if it was because of his response or because she had been dancing, but she ripped her fingers from his grasp and placed her hands on her hips. “ _Can I help you?_ ”

“An acquaintance owns this studio. I was stopping by to pick up a jacket I left here the other day.” He motioned to the jacket he was wearing, the yellow sections of fabric over his shoulders rustling as he moved. “I heard music and wanted to see what was going on.”

“Well, you saw. Now you can go.”

“I saw you the other night at the bridge.” Oblio disregarded her words and pointed to the area she had been dancing in. “You could join in, you know. From what I saw just now, your moves are astounding… _elegant_.”

She almost thanked him, but refrained, only tilting her head and thinning her lips in response.

He nodded quickly, the thick wave of dark blue bangs that hung in front of an eye shook with each movement. “I’ll go.” He added a small bow, lowering his head and slightly bending forward at the waist.

The movement mildly surprised Jaryn. Did this guy really just bow to her?

“It was nice to meet you,” he slowly began backing out of the room.

“You technically never did.”

“I know. I never got your name.” He had backed up into the door frame, a hand planted on the worn wood of the door. “And I know you aren’t about to give it to me.” A pause. The time it took for him to give a simple upturn of his chin and an arch of an eyebrow. “Not yet, anyways.”

Oblio turned and disappeared from her view into the darkness of the hallway outside. She could hear the heels of his boots clicking along the grimy tile floor. There was some small part of her that wanted to lean out into the hallway and casually throw out her name after him, but she refrained from that too. Jaryn stood in the middle of the studio for a minute or two, her feet frozen to the ground but her mind spinning. Was she really good enough to dance with those people that they had come across that night? How long had he been watching her?

Her face flushed again as she scowled. The music had continued but somehow seemed quieter now, and she could feel every muscle in her leg aching. Grabbing her keys and her jacket, she shut the lights and stereo off then left, locking the studio on her way out.

As she pulled her key out of the front door, she threw a glance to the sign above it. 

_Cityside Studios. Sponsored by Tandance Industries._

Tandance Industries. She had seen the headquarters building of that company a number of times in the previous year or two. It had been built fairly recently and she never gave it much thought until she started working nights at the studio. She pictured groups of dancers in that building, practicing routines, getting paid to perform them for crowds of people – it was an office building it seemed, sure. But it related to dancing. There had to be something amazing going on in there.

With a sigh, she shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket and began the walk back to the apartment.

Kerith still wasn’t home. The digital clock with the number that was always messed up at the end of the time stated that it was one-thirty-something in the morning.

Jaryn took a long shower and climbed into an old oversized t-shirt and sweatpants. Two-twenty-something.

Still no sign of her brother.

Crawling onto her side of the bed and trying to keep the flash of disappointment from her face, she shut her eyes against the darkness.

He was her little brother. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, she was worried.

…

“That was… alright.” The growling man said, peering across his desk to the tall, blue-haired male that stood in the center of his office. “An _alright_ first impression. You can do better. You need to do better.”

Oblio responded with a small nod.

“I assume you want this just as much as I do.”

It was true. Oblio did share a common goal with this man. But the man never told him his exact plans for making this goal come to pass. There were semi-informative snippets shared here and there, but no concrete plans and that made Oblio uneasy.

“I’ll take your silence as a _yes sir_.”

The female he had just watched. This Jaryn. He had been watching her ever since she started working at the studio, ever since she had started using the main room to practice in. He owned the studio, along with others around the city, and had hidden cameras placed in them to watch for dancers that had what she had. She was alone usually, but occasionally a man who had to be her twin brother would come in and watch her. She had potential. She had something familiar. She had _something_.

Something Dr. Tan needed.

“You need to see her again. Get closer to her. Bring me back more information.”

Oblio delivered one curt nod. That seemed easy enough. He was never about deception; it was bad for the soul. But some harmless chatter with that girl couldn’t stir up too much of anything except what Tan needed.

Information and background. That was it, right?

He shifted his eyes to the side, where they landed on a piece of gold machinery. It had limbs and a face, all of which were shut down at the moment. Somehow that was going to become their joint goal.

Somehow it was going to become _Bernice_.


	10. Chapter 10

The diner seemed louder than usual, but Jaryn decided that was more than likely her headache that just magnified the noise. She was in the back, transferring dirty dishes from her tray into the sink when she caught a glimpse through the serving window behind the counter of her brother coming in for his shift. Jaryn could feel her lips pressing together. She had been repeating to herself all morning not to let what happened that morning get to her, but she could feel an emotion that she never reserved for her brother bubbling up in full force.

Kerith stepped through the swinging door into the kitchen and gave her a half-smile. “Afternoon, Jare.”

She threw the fork she had been shifting from her tray straight down into the sink. “What did you do last night?”

“Huh?”

Jaryn wasn’t used to feeling like this and she knew she wouldn’t be if he hadn’t smelled the way he did when she woke up that morning.

“Were you drinking?”

“…what?”

“I woke up this morning and the stench of alcohol just—you smelled horrible.” Rubbing her hands on her diner uniform, she pointed at him. “And don’t play dumb like I don’t know what it smells like. I don’t want to remember _any of that_.”

The expression on Kerith’s face went from confusion to sadness, with a hint of shame in between the shift. “I had… one drink. That was it.”

That was some of the truth. He had three drinks. But it hadn’t affected him much at all. She didn’t need to know that though, he thought. It would only hurt her.

“Why?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Because _everyone else was doing it?_ ”

“It was nothing, Jaryn. They took me to some party, I was uncomfortable. I just wanted to unwind somehow. Wanted to relax, I guess. Steve told me one drink would help me calm down. I just sat and people watched all night. The whole thing was kind of boring. Made fun of people in my head. Wished you were there.”

Jaryn turned back to the sink and began placing the rest of the dirty dishes into the basin. She wanted to say she was worried about him. But it was once. It happened once. She felt herself talking deep breaths over the sink. She could still feel Kerith behind her. “Right.”

With a sweep of the arm, Jaryn had the tray back up in the air and she was back out the swinging door, back into the dining area. Kerith watched her through the small window over the sink. He could see how tense it had made her.

He didn’t have the heart to tell her yet that they had invited him back out that weekend – Friday night. They wanted her to come too.

…

The shelf of fashion magazines at the library was dotted with new issues here and there and Jaryn found herself moving along, her eyes meeting each cover for a few moments before flicking to the next. When she picked up the newest issue of Vogue, the shelf revealed the empty space where she could see through to the other side. Her gaze was met with a pair of light eyes, dyed blue bangs almost covering the left one. 

She recognized him right away as the guy from the studio who had interrupted her the night before. _Great,_ she thought, _now I have to deal with_ this _again._

What _this_ was, Jaryn wasn’t entirely sure. She wasn’t used to being complimented on her dancing – or on anything really – unless it was from her brother. The fact that he had done just that the night before caught her off-guard.

Jaryn looked away from him almost instantly, pretending she hadn't locked eyes with him, and wandered away holding the magazine, to a table near the back of the library. The one she and Kerith usually occupied. 

Luckily, there was an interview with Lady Gaga in the newest issue, and Jaryn knew she could lose herself in that and easily ignore the guy who was still puttering around near the magazines – what had his name been?

_Oblio._

She scowled at the fact that the name had snapped into her mind so easily.

"Mind if I sit here?"

Slowly looking up from the magazine, Jaryn eyed him before peering around in an obvious fashion to the many completely empty tables in her immediate area. "Because those tables aren't good enough?"

He shook his head. "No. Those tables don't come with the added company of a confident woman such as yourself."

"Because you know that."

"I saw you dance last night. I was watching you through the window in the door before I came in. Anyone who can dance like that has to be somewhat confident.”

Jaryn kicked the chair out across the table from her, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back in her seat. She arched an eyebrow at the cover of the magazine he had dropped onto the table. It was a scantily clad woman straddling a racing motorcycle. "I have a bike. I read these for the bikes," he stated, pulling the chair out further and seating himself.

"Mmhmm, of course. They all do."

He eyed what Jaryn had laid out across the table in front of her. “She has a wonderful and genuine aura.”

“ _What?_ ”

Oblio motioned to the page she had the magazine open to, which contained a large black-and-white image of Lady Gaga and the start of the article about her. 

“Her. She delivers a good message, telling people to be themselves. She’s on such a large platform, can speak to so many people – and for her to say to everyone that they should stand up for what they believe in… I admire that.”

“Oh…” Jaryn looked down the page once more, nodding slowly. “Yeah.”

When she looked back up, she saw Oblio sitting across from her, magazine open to an article without a single half-naked woman on the page. Just pictures and paragraphs about motorcycles. He had his head propped against one of his hands as he read, his other hand reaching up to push his bangs out of his eyes.

“That’s… that’s all you wanted to do? Sit here and read?”

He looked up from the magazine, his head still resting in his open palm. “Yeah, what else would I do here?”

“I don’t know. You don’t seem like the type who likes company.”

“How would you know? You’ve seen me twice—“

“I guess the whole Lone-Wolf-with-a-motorcycle thing.”

“Bikes can fit two. Mine can, anyways.”

She looked away from him when he said that, back down to the issue of Vogue in front of her. Back to Gaga. Lady Gaga wouldn’t be able to see the color that was rising in her cheeks. When she let her eyes dart back up, Oblio had returned to his article, his gaze running across the page.

“Jaryn.”

“Hmm?” He looked up again.

“My name’s Jaryn.” She stuck her hand out across the table.

He took it and shook it gently, his lips forming a smile. “Nice to meet you, Jaryn.”

Oblio had known her name already from Dr. Tan, but it was refreshing to hear it come out of her mouth. It would be nice to finally be able to call her by her name. He felt a little guilty about the situation, but he knew once he and Tan reached their common goal, he didn’t have to see the man anymore and he would have back what he lost so suddenly and violently…

“Nice to meet you too, Oblio.”

They dropped hands and both let their eyes fall back to their respective articles, traces of smiles still apparent on both of their faces.

…

Friday afternoon. The diner was packed and Jaryn was taking care of six tables while Kerith was moving dirty dishes through the kitchen nonstop. He was doubling as a host as well, while the usual host doubled as a waiter for two other tables. He caught up with Jaryn in the kitchen when there was a small lull and he spoke to her as she was pulling completed orders from the kitchen and placing them on her tray.

“Jaryn, want to go out tonight?”

“Where?”

“To Cathedral. That new goth club that opened up near the water. Elya and the guys invited us. Told us to find our best dark threads so we can go laugh at the goth dancing.”

 _Of course. Them._ Jaryn thought as she put the last dish on her tray. “No thanks. Have plans already.”

She had been thinking about cancelling said plans and going out with Kerith, if it was just going to be the two of them. But the mention of those people he met in his art class – the ones she’d met on their birthday –

_The ones he’d been drinking with._

The mention of them made her original plans for the night look just fine. She would’ve settled for staring at the wall in their apartment all night instead of going out with them. She still couldn’t place why they bothered her so much – besides the fact that, according to Kerith, they regularly enjoyed drinking and causing “silly harmless trouble” as Kerith put it, when he talked about them to her. He said they were _funny_. Jaryn could do without that.

“What plans?”

“Have fun at Cathedral,” Jaryn took her tray and left the kitchen through the swinging door, leaving his question unanswered. She felt a pang in her chest. She felt bad for shutting him down that quickly, but he knew how she felt about those three. The feeling was also because she hadn’t told him about Oblio. They usually shared everything, from weird people they saw at the grocery store to what was in the new issues of magazines at the library if they took trips there alone. 

She was quite unaware that he would feel the same way only moments later, shortly after their conversation. He would feel a pang in his chest. 

He followed her out of the kitchen and took his place at the front of the restaurant, when mere seconds later a man walked in. He held a motorcycle helmet, wore a black leather jacket with yellow shoulder pads and had a head of brilliant blue hair.

Kerith tried to paste a smile on his face, dreading the fact that the guy he had seen staring at his sister that night at the bridge would be able to stare at her more—

“Hi, is Jaryn working today?”

“She is,” Kerith’s train of thought was derailed and his mind exploded with questions at the fact that he knew his sister’s name. How—

“Would it be any trouble if I requested to sit in her section?”

“Not at all,” Kerith responded through clenched teeth. “Right this way.”

“Thank you.”

Kerith seated him at a booth in the corner, forced another smile to him, told him she’d be right with him and then began collecting dirty dishes from the recently abandoned table behind the blue-haired man. As he was approaching the swinging door, Jaryn came out and passed him, serving food to a table near the corner booth. He passed through the door and dropped the dishes in the sink, watching his sister through the window above it. 

The blue-haired man grinned up at her and said something. He couldn’t see what her sister’s expression was since her back was to the kitchen, but she obviously said something out of the ordinary to him because he laughed. When Jaryn turned around and started back towards the kitchen, Kerith kept his eyes on the man. He could see him looking at her, watching her walk away, but he was far enough away that he couldn’t see the man’s eyes well enough to see if he was looking her up and down. In Kerith’s mind though, he was.

She came back into the kitchen. He turned his head towards her and watched as she grabbed a cup, filling it up with root beer. 

“Who’s your friend?”

“His name’s Oblio.”

“ _Oblio._ ”

“Yes, _Kerith_. Oblio.”

She hit the swinging door with her hip and went back out into the dining room, making her way over to Oblio’s table and setting the cup on the surface. He watched her lean over his shoulder as he pointed to stuff on the menu again. She laughed at something he said.

It took most of his willpower to look away from them and to the clock in the kitchen. 4:56 pm. Bus a couple more tables, seat a few more people and he was off for the night.

Then it was time to hit up the goth club with Elya, Steve and Tommy.

And maybe get Steve to slip him a few drinks.


	11. Chapter 11

Kerith stood at the mirror in their tiny bathroom. He was dressed in all black and currently ringing his eyes with a kohl eyeliner, smudging it as he applied it. If they were going to a goth club, he had to look the part. He didn’t see his sister enter the bathroom, still in her diner uniform, until he leaned back from the mirror and blinked a few times.

She was watching him in the mirror.

“It looks good.”

“I don’t look like a raccoon?” He asked, looking back at her reflection.

He watched a smile tug at the corner of her lips and then her reflection vanished behind him as she leaned over to twist the faucet in the shower. When she reappeared in the mirror, Kerith was facing her.

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Going out with Oblio.”

He tried not to let his face show the concern that was growing inside of him. She could take care of herself years ago at the roller rink, why was it different here? Why was it different now? 

Kerith’s mind kept going back to _Gregory_.

“Promise me you’ll be careful, Janey.”

He could see her shaking suddenly, ever so slightly, and he grabbed her hands in her own. He was worried he had suddenly brought the thoughts of their old life back.

But her reaction was to her own thoughts - thoughts of her brother drinking, complaining, and becoming something like the monster that they had escaped from before they had been legal adults.

“I will if you will, Keith.”

“Of course.” He nodded and leaned forward, planting a kiss on her forehead. “Now take a shower. You smell like cooking grease.”

He left the bathroom and shut the door behind him then exited their small apartment, moving out into the cool breeze of the evening.

She had meandered from the shower to the closet of the bedroom, wrapped in a thinning, pale seafoam-colored towel and stared at her wardrobe. Thanks to the thrift stores dotted around the city, their wardrobe had grown well enough, but even then she couldn’t decide what to wear. With an eyeroll aimed at herself, she scoffed at the fact that she was putting so much thought into this and grabbed a pair of black pants and a purple top. Simple enough.

_Whatever._

Throwing the clothes on, Jaryn glanced at herself in the bathroom mirror once more. She grabbed a black jacket on the way out the door and headed downstairs to wait outside.

…

He had been with Dr. Tan after he left the diner, informing him that he was going to see Jaryn that evening. Tan had tried to make him wear a microphone under his clothes so he could listen in on their conversations but Oblio vehemently disagreed to that. He was fine with bringing back bits of pertinent information, but it wasn’t in his nature to let someone get blatantly spied on without their knowledge.

Plus, Jaryn seemed like a nice girl. Not someone who deserved everything Tan was trying to push on Oblio to do to her.

He saw her waiting out front of the address she had given him and pulled up to the curb, taking his helmet off. 

“Here,” he said, handing it to her.

“What about you?”

“Your head’s prettier than mine.” He leaned up slightly and plopped it down on her head, then motioned behind him.

She threw her leg over the seat and planted her booted feet in the footholds near the back. His helmet was warm and it smelled like some sort of mix of patchouli and lavender. Jaryn was contentedly snorting it when he flipped the visor up. 

“Put your arms around my waist and lean with me, okay?”

She nodded and he flipped the visor back down, spinning around to face the road ahead of them.

When she had climbed on the bike behind him, Oblio had to get used to the feeling of a second rider. No one had ever sat there before. It wasn’t a bad feeling. It even got slightly better when she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his waist. The warmth of her body against his back would be welcome against the breeze.

“Ready?”

“Mmhmm.”

He started the bike and headed through the city towards the water, tracing the coastline north towards a group of trees that sat on a tall bluff along the beach. Oblio could feel her grasp around his waist tighten, which absently caused him to speed up a bit. She had asked where they were going when he saw her at the diner earlier that day. He told her it was a surprise. 

Stopping the bike by the treeline, he waited for Jaryn to climb off the back of the bike before sliding to the ground and turning to her. He watched her take the helmet off, the faded ash blonde hair disheveled and falling across her face. She tried to set the helmet down on the back of the bike with her vision obscured, but it rolled off. Her palms went to her face but ran into his right hand, the fingers of which were already brushing hair out of her field of vision.

“Sorry,” she looked down at the helmet, trying to distract herself from his fingertips against her cheek. Her mind was moving at a mile a minute and she wasn’t sure why. Part of her expected him to suddenly turn into Gregory and shove her back against a tree-- the other part wanted his fingers to keep moving, across her cheek, under her ear, down her neck—

“No problem.” He picked the helmet up and set it down where she meant to place it then fished around in the storage compartment under the seat for a rolled up blanket. “Come on.”

She followed Oblio, watching him unroll the blanket as they shifted around trees and under branches. Inside of the blanket, he pulled out a bag and held it up to show her. It was from the burger joint near her apartment.

“I can’t cook… so…”

Jaryn chuckled. “That’s fine.”

“You’re lucky.”

“Why?” She asked.

He held a branch out of the way for her to pass and then gently placed it back in its original spot before slipping around her and pointing out their destination. It was a small open area in the middle of the trees covered in bright green grass.

“This is my spot. I always come here alone.”

“Of course,” she glanced back at his—

_Lone-Wolf-with-a-motorcycle thing_

—bike, which was now obscured by the woods they had passed through. She was truly alone with him now and she tried to get herself to stop shaking. Would this be like Gregory? Or would this be something different? Whatever it was, she was going to face it. She always managed to in the past.

“Are you okay, Jaryn?”

“I’m fine.” She pulled her jacket shut around her and watched him spread the blanket out in the middle of the clearing. The sun was slowly starting to set and peeked through the trees, bathing the grass in brilliant orange slivers of light. 

They sat and ate the burgers and fries Oblio had picked up before heading to her place, talking in between bites of food and sips of soda. They talked about music, museums in the city and complimentary colors for at least an hour before Oblio brought up Kerith and what happened earlier that afternoon.

“So the guy who seated me at the diner today – that had to be the twin brother you told me about, right?”

“Kerith? Yeah, that was him.”

“He didn’t seem very happy to see me.”

Jaryn nodded, a smile tugging at her lips. “We’re… we’re both very protective of each other. _Over_ … protective, perhaps.” 

“I can tell.” The amusement in his voice was apparent.

Her eyes went from absently staring at her can of soda up to Oblio, who popped a fry in his mouth and looked at her expectantly as he picked up his drink, as if he wanted details. She opened her mouth to speak, shut it, opened it again and then pressed her lips together.

He sat cross-legged, across from her. He had been holding his can of soda with both hands until he moved his right to rest on her forearm, his skin touching hers where she had pulled the sleeves of her jacket up while eating.

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to talk about it. Don’t worry.”

She was staring down at his hand, the palm cold and wet against her skin from the condensation on the can of soda. 

“Kerith and I left our hometown when we were seventeen. We ran away to come here. There was nothing for us there. At all. As we grew up, our father became more and more unbearable – he was drinking all the time, sitting on the couch doing nothing, didn’t pay any attention to us unless we were doing something that pissed him off. Right before we left, the few…”

_Had it been months? Weeks? Days?_

“He found me and Kerith in the bathroom one night, putting on makeup. It was harmless. I was trying to make myself look… less plain… I guess. He was joking around. We were just having fun. Our father came in and… took Kerith into his room and hit him.”

Jaryn hadn’t been looking at Oblio when she spoke; she was still looking down at his hand. She saw it tense up and then vanish from her view. Moments later he was beside her instead of across from her. If he was about to say something, she cut him off.

“It got worse after that. I would see bruises on Kerith that he never told me about. One night… one night I came home and… was… I was dancing in my room. He hit me for that. Grabbed my neck…”

“For _dancing_? Jaryn…”

She shook her head. “I bashed him in the skull with his ceramic ashtray. Kerith said we were leaving that night. We never had anywhere to go, not enough money to make it anywhere else – we had saved up some but it was never enough to get away. Kerith… he could put up with being hurt as long as it meant a roof over our heads, but once our father laid his hands on me… that was the final straw for my brother. We packed up that night and left. Never looked back.”

“I’m so sorry.” Oblio had placed an arm around her shoulders.

“No, I’m sorry. I… you wanted to know about me and Kerith and I gave you the unnecessarily long version. I was rambling.”

“You weren’t. You’re fine.” 

He wanted to add _you’re safe now_. But he didn’t want to cross any lines.

“What about your mom?” He asked instead.

“She died when we were young.”

“What was she like?” 

“She was a dancer. She died when we were six so I don’t remember too much. But I remember her being very poised, graceful… she was very supportive. She put us in dance classes and came to all of our recitals. We continued after she died, but our father took us out of classes because he didn’t approve of it.”

“Why not?”

“I think because our mom loved it so much. It made her happy, goals of hers always involved it… he just… didn’t like it. Maybe because it was something he couldn’t do? Because she talked about it all the time? I guess it was a world of hers that he could never be a part of. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I just know I’m glad to be away from _that_.”

“Easy to see why.” 

“What about you? What about your family?” Jaryn finally looked over at him. The last rays of the sun cast a deep red glow on his face and she watched as he pushed his bangs out of his eyes with his hand. 

“I’m an only child. My dad left when I was three and my mom raised me alone until she married my stepfather. I was eight then. When I turned eighteen I moved here to the city. My mom died in a car accident shortly after that.”

“That’s how my mom died,” Jaryn frowned. “What about her, what was she like?”

“She’s the one who got me into dance too. She showed me old tapes she had recorded of TV shows that just played music while people danced. That’s all the show was. Dancing. I sat in front of the TV for hours watching these tapes over and over again. She would sit on the couch beside me, braiding her long black hair. Her name was Bernice. Everyone called her Neecee.”

“Neecee sounds like she was a good person.” She finished her soda and set the can down ahead of her, where it fell over on the blanket because of the lumpy ground underneath. “Do you still talk to your stepfather at all?”

Oblio’s mind pulled up thoughts of the man who wanted him to wear a microphone under his clothes while he was out with Jaryn.

“Occasionally,” he said. He quickly changed the subject before Jaryn could ask more about him. “So your brother dances too?”

“He does.” Nodding, she began absently throwing the fast food trash into the bag. “Well, _did_. He hasn’t danced recently. Maybe because of our father… I wish he would though. He’s good. He was always better than me.”

“Better than _you_? I don’t know, from what I saw, you’re pretty damn good yourself.”

“Thanks.”

Oblio moved away from her and straightened the blanket out, collapsing onto his back as the sun finally vanished under the horizon. 

“Oblio?”

“Hm?”

“Do you know anything about the group of people who gather at places around the city and just… dance? My brother and I saw them one night on the way back to our apartment – you said you saw me that night. I’ve heard people talking about it at the diner too. Something about a gathering at a subway station or…?”

He turned on his side and rested his elbow on the ground, palm against his cheek, holding his head up to look at her. “I do.” 

Oblio told her about it. How people would gather places every other weekend. Whether it was on the beach, on the pedestrian walkway across the bridge, on one of the city’s rooftops – there were so many places they would transform into their own little clubs. He even told her how some of the younger dancers did it in their high school’s halls and cafeteria. 

“How do you get in?” Jaryn leaned forward towards him, her eyes wide.

He laughed. “Get in? You just show up and dance.” Oblio pushed himself up higher on his arm, letting his face move closer to hers. “Come with me next weekend.”

“You go all the time?”

“Of course I do. I don’t just go, I _dance_.”

They discussed techniques and styles of dance for awhile, Jaryn absently sprawling out on the blanket beside him at some point in their conversation. When they fell silent for a few moments, Oblio pointed at constellations in the small patch of sky they could see between the treetops around them. 

He took her back to her apartment well after midnight, taking the helmet off for her this time and they said goodnight to each other. He grabbed her right hand and kissed the back of it before she started off into the building. She threw him one last wave once she made it through the dingy glass doors into the lobby and he waited until he saw her get into the elevator before he took off on his bike.

Jaryn didn’t expect her brother to be home yet, so when she opened the door to an empty apartment she wasn’t surprised. She found herself looking out the window down to the street. She wasn’t sure why. 

_Stop it. He already left._

She scolded herself and retreated to the bedroom, crawling into the empty bed and falling asleep almost instantly. Before she dozed off, she felt her leg shift - where her foot would’ve normally run into her brother’s leg, there was nothing.  


…

“This one’s on me,” Steve used his black gloved hand to slide a beer down to the 20-year-old who sat on the stool at the end of the bar, his back to the wall beside it.

“The last four were on you.”

Steve shrugged. “Everything’s more fun with booze, y’know?”

Kerith’s mind was hazy. He briefly saw his father somewhere in that haze. His sister. His bruises in the mirror. The dishes his sister threw down into the sink at the diner. The spreading black and blue mark that had been at the base of his sister’s spine. His father’s ashtray. The images were all so faint…

“Mmm,” was all he managed to respond with as he grabbed the bottle and knocked it back. He let his eyes scan the sea of the mostly black-clad patrons of Cathedral. It was a mess of lace, latex and fishnet out there, glints of silver catching his gaze every now and then. The music wasn’t bad, the crowd wasn’t bad. Steve, Tommy and Elya were acting sort of obnoxious making fun of people here and there, but Kerith found it easy to ignore.

He finished the beer and slammed the bottle down on the table before sliding off of the barstool and making his way towards the crowd.

“Where’s he going?” Tommy elbowed Steve.

“How should I know?”

“Maybe he’s going to dance.” Elya shifted off of her own seat and followed Kerith, the two men behind her doing the same. 

They weaved their way through the crowd and found Kerith in the center, black-ringed eyes closed, head back and body moving perfectly with the beat.

He didn’t acknowledge that they were there, he didn’t even realize it. He had lost himself in the music. At first he had been swaying back and forth - probably thanks to the beer – but after that, when the bass of the song kicked in, Kerith found himself moving like he hadn’t moved in years. The images were still in his head as he spun. He could see his mother’s face, smiling at him through a glass observation window at the dance studio. He could see his sister’s sleeping form, curled up in her blanket beside him on their bed at the apartment. He could see their father slamming a beer bottle against the kitchen countertop. He could see Elya, Tommy and Steve laughing at some stupid video on the internet. He could see a head of blue hair – Oblio – sitting in the diner watching his sister clean a table.

The song had been building, the bass shaking the floor. He could feel the crowd pulsing around him. Somehow they felt like they were far away from him but on top of him at the same time. He didn’t dare to open his eyes and look though. Kerith just kept moving.

Things he had never seen before suddenly broke through that haze in his mind. He saw himself bleeding and shivering, stumbling along the pedestrian walkway on the bridge. He saw his father standing alongside the wreckage of their mother’s car. He saw his sister pushed up against a brick wall somewhere, Gregory violently pressing himself against her to keep her there – when he was about to smash his lips into hers Gregory had shifted into Oblio. He saw that mess of people that he and his sister had seen on the bridge that night – they were on a tall rooftop somewhere; people were dancing.

They were dancing.

_He was dancing._

When he woke up the next morning, he was in his bed. Jaryn wasn’t there. His stomach hurt and there was eyeliner smeared all over his pillowcase.

He was breathing heavily. He knew it all hadn’t been a dream.

Stumbling to the shower, Kerith prepared to face the day. He could vividly remember everything he had seen in that haze the previous night and he knew it all of it would haunt him for days, if not weeks.


	12. Chapter 12

When Kerith got to the diner that afternoon to start his shift, he saw his sister at a booth in the corner, taking orders. Her hair was pulled back into a messy bun and there were bags under her eyes. He followed her back into the kitchen when she went to go put in the order.

“Jaryn, I—“

She ignored him and pushed past him back out into the dining area with a tray full of drinks. Whenever he tried to stop her during the time their shifts overlapped, she kept her eyes off of his face and moved away from him.

For about a month they had both owned separate cell phones -- they had shared one before -- purchasing them with some money they had been saving up. Their phones that month had been full of silly photos of people they saw and things they found that they sent to each other along with messages of encouragement during the times they were apart. This was the first time Kerith received a text from his sister’s phone that filled him with a sense of dread.

_You smelled like our father when you came home this morning. It made me throw up. Hope you’re satisfied._

She had sent the message right after she had left the diner. He couldn’t go after her. He still had three hours of his shift.

Kerith came home that night to an empty apartment and as he placed his keys in the almost completely unwoven and broken basket on the kitchen counter, he noticed the keys to the studio were missing. He was ready to grab his keys again and head down there, but he knew she needed time to cool off. She wouldn’t want to see him right now.

He sat on the floor in front of their lopsided table in the living room of their apartment and set his phone down on the surface. Jaryn’s text message was still up on the screen. It had been since he read it for the first time earlier that day. It only changed when the phone vibrated and Kerith picked it up, finding a new message from Elya.

They were going back to Cathedral.

…

He sat at his neurotically organized desk, flipping through the photos Oblio had brought him and watching live feeds from cameras he had sprinkled around the city in dance studios and clubs that his corporation owned.

He was watching Jaryn in Citywide Studios. She was alone, spinning and sliding across the wood floor in front of the giant mirror. Her eyes were narrowed, her jaw clenched. Her hands outstretched, fingers extended, nails like crooked talons on each one.

He was watching Kerith in Cathedral. A circle of people had formed around him, all swaying and clapping and he had a glass of beer in one hand and both arms above his head, shifting his hips back and forth to the music. The glass was almost full and not a drop of liquid was sloshing out with his movements. He eyes were smeared with black makeup and his hair fell around his face in sweaty strands of dirty blonde.

They reminded him of Bernice. Jaryn had her cold elegance and Kerith, her sleek power. And if Kerith danced anything like his sister while sober, these two could be unstoppable.

With some work and some cooperation here and there, they would be unstoppable.

Dr. Tan would make it so.

…

Oblio had stopped by Cathedral after his stepfather had told him to pick up the hard copies of the footage from the cameras there. Before he collected them, he stood along the railing of the walkway on the second floor of the club and looked down. He saw Kerith in the middle of a growing circle of people.

He frowned at the state the man was in and slipped away, throwing the tapes in the compartment on his bike before heading across town to the studio.

Kerith had seen Oblio on the walkway above, but at that point he wasn’t sure if it was reality or the alcohol. He was faintly aware of the people around him, the people watching him and giving him space to dance. He was faintly aware that some point later he was dancing with Elya while Tommy and Steve were at the bar. Somewhere behind the haze he could feel himself finishing his glass of beer, he could feel himself dropping the glass at his feet and he could feel the people closing in around him. Elya was almost pressed against him at the point, both of them moving with the music. Kerith could see the mess of red hair on her head whipping back and forth. He heard the music in his head – it sounded to him like it was being filtered through the cheapest pair of headphones that existed.

He saw Elya bouncing around in front of him before standing on her tiptoes and wrapping her arm around him, clutching her fingers in his hair. Her cheek was suddenly pressed against his.

“Ker,” he heard in his ears, a hiss over the bassline.

Only Jaryn called him that.

“You’re an amazing dancer.”

It was his sister’s voice. When Elya pulled away from him, Kerith saw Jaryn dancing ahead of him. He knew it couldn’t have been her though because her movements weren’t exactly with the beat, they were jerky and uncoordinated.

“ _I know_ ,” Kerith responded, his voice dripping with alcohol-induced bitterness towards the alcohol-induced vision of his sister. “ _I know I am._ ”

He shut his eyes and continued to move, shaking his head back and forth with the beat before opening his eyes to Elya’s grinning face again. Kerith turned away from her, shifting his gaze back to the walkway. There was no one up there now.

“Jare.” It slipped past his lips, drowned out by the music around him.

…

He found the doors to the studio open and slipped in, making his way down the dark hallway to the place where he’d first talked to Jaryn. She was inside the same room; first one on the right, dancing to something Oblio could only hear the bass of from where he stood. He watched her through the small window in the door, tearing his eyes away from her only for a moment to peer up in the corner above her and across the room. There was only one camera in that room and it was in that corner near the ceiling. He knew Dr. Tan was watching her.

Letting his knuckles hit the door a couple times, he slowly began to open it, slipping into the room. He figured the knocks would go unheard over the music. Jaryn stopped and padded over to the stereo, switching the music off.

“Hey…” she said, in between heavy breaths.

“You didn’t have to stop, Jaryn.”

“I need a break anyways.”

He moved over to the stereo and restarted the music before waving her to the middle of the room and taking off his jacket, placing it in the corner of the room where the camera couldn’t see it.

They spent the next hour or so talking and practicing, Jaryn showing Oblio moves he had never seen and Oblio assisting Jaryn with her extensions. She was usually so focused on her emotions when she danced – especially tonight after everything with Kerith -- that she hadn’t realized she hadn’t been reaching her limbs out as far as they could go. The CD he had started had ended and they were both seated in the middle of the wooden floor, talking about the things she had learned in dance classes when she was little.

She was mildly surprised when a few moments passed and Oblio raised his voice slightly, “Oh, come here. I have to show you this really funny video I found. We can watch it on my phone.”

“I didn’t know you were amused by internet videos.”

“I’m full of surprises, Jare.”

Only Kerith called her that.

She followed him to the corner of the room where his jacket was crumpled up in a heap and stood over his crouching form. When he returned to a standing position, she opened her mouth to ask him where his phone was but was cut off by how close to her he had suddenly shifted. His lips were next to her ear, “Come with me tonight. To dance. They’re going to be on the rooftops.”

“Why are we over in the corner whispering about it?” Jaryn murmured back through a curtain of blue hair.

“The meetups are a secret.”

“No one is here but us.” Her first instinct had been to push him backwards, like she had done so many times in the past at the roller rink, but she found this much more welcome. Oblio wasn’t strained against her, trying to hold her back against a sink or the side of a stall. He had herded her into the corner against the old stone walls of the studio and she noticed, finally, that one of her hands was wrapped in his and his other hand was against the wall behind her, near her shoulder. His breath on her ear was warm and she caught that scent again; lavender and patchouli.

“Secrets aren’t meant to be shouted, Jaryn. They’re something we share only with the people who need to hear them. Come with me.”

Her free hand reached between them and pushed the blue wisps away from his eyes. “Fine.”

Keeping her hand in his, he reached down and grabbed his jacket before pulling her from the studio. As she locked the building up, his phone rang.

_“Where are you going?”_

“We’re going out to dinner.”

_“At midnight?”_

“Yes, why is that such an issue?”

 _“You’re not taking her to_ those others _, are you?”_

“No.”

_“Good. They’ve all already… contaminated each other. I don’t want them getting to her and you too. I need everyone’s specific skill sets and moves. Not a gross mess of it all oozed together.”_

Oblio hung up and slid the phone into the pocket of his jacket.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes.” Oblio turned to Jaryn and picked the helmet up, handing it to her. “Just my stepdad, checking up on me.”

“That’s nice of him.”

“Yes. Very.” With a very small hint of a grimace, Oblio pulled away from the curb and felt Jaryn’s arms tighten around his waist. He felt a small pang of guilt about lying to Dr. Tan, but some of the man’s rules and practices rubbed Oblio the wrong way.

He didn’t want them to get contaminated? Was that really the way he was going to word things? As far as Oblio knew, everyone Dr. Tan had been watching possessed certain qualities he wanted to infuse into their common goal. Bernice. His wife. Oblio’s mother.

Oblio kept turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to some of the things Tan did or spoke about doing when it came to Bernice – the mere fact that he referred to the dancers possibly learning each other’s moves and tricks in a friendly sort of fashion sent a shudder up Oblio’s spine. How was that _contamination_?

He just wanted his mother back.

He hated looking at that gold mess of limbs in Tan’s office though; the thing that would become his mother again one day, if everything worked out. He didn’t want to think of that as his mother. He just wanted her back. He wanted to be able to wrap his arms around her small frame and kiss the crown of her head or tell her about the new bike he had been looking at. Oblio wanted to introduce his mother to—

His thoughts came to a screeching halt. He was supposed to be helping Tan get information about Jaryn and her twin brother for his work on Bernice. Not entertaining fantasies about introducing his mother to Jaryn.

That was it though. That was Oblio’s goal. Tan just wanted her back for himself. Oblio wanted her back for her own life -- to give her a chance at what was ripped away from her so fast.

He had come from a broken home and knew his mother had been through so much. He wanted to show her family. He wanted her to live her life. He wanted her to experience being a mother again, maybe even being a grandmother one day.

_A grandmother._

Oblio knew that was why he always pushed people away. He never interacted and meshed with people just right and went to his mother when he had questions about anything relating to communication. When she died so suddenly, he felt awkward and alone and all those questions about how to interact – he could only ask himself.

And he never had the answers.

People he would almost grow close to, people he had started to possibly open up to would be driven away by _something_. Oblio felt like something in the universe wanted him to be alone, like he needed to be alone for a reason. Things always managed to drive people away from him. He turned to meditation and self-discovery. Since his mother died, he had been on a journey to find himself.

He wanted her back though. He wanted someone to tell him that everything would be alright. He wanted to tell her everything would be alright.

He found himself surprised he had been able to talk to Jaryn so easily when he first met her and even on subsequent meetings with her when he would open up a little more here and there. She seemed to come from the same sort of mental place he had, except she had a brother with whom she could share her life and problems.

He had his bike.

Stumbling from the back of the bike, Jaryn stood there and waited for Oblio to take the helmet off of her. He did so, a faint trace of a grin on his lips, and pointed upwards to the building they had pulled up beside.

Dr. Tan had no cameras up there. The places the dancers met never had cameras.

She followed him into the lobby of the building, past an old busted elevator with blinking lights in it and into the stairwell, where they climbed flight after flight to the roof. They were both out of breath when Oblio finally pushed the door open, the cool breeze relaxing and refreshing.

“How many flights…?” Jaryn heaved.

“Twenty-two. Seemed like more, right?”

Jaryn could see the circle of people, just like she had that night on the way home from the Chinese restaurant. She could hear the music loud and clear over the cheers. Oblio grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the crowd where Jaryn could finally make out what was going on in the center. There was a girl dancing there with a head of bright pink hair and upside-down heart-shaped glasses over her eyes.

Oblio saw Jaryn’s lips break into a grin.

The guy that Jaryn saw the first night, the one with the goggles, moved into the circle after her, giving her a high five on the way. Jaryn heard the pink-haired girl say something about the guy’s grandma, which the guy cackled wildly about before the first notes of an old funk hit came over the speakers around the crowd. Everyone was clapping along and as the song wound down, the guy with the goggles pointed to the area in the crowd where Jaryn was standing.

“My man!”

Oblio suddenly shifted away from her, pushing through the crowd and looking to his right where he threw his jacket. It landed beside a kid who couldn’t have been older than twelve or thirteen. He had black hair and a pair of sagging suspenders. He was running the stereo, Jaryn noted.

“G, Benny Benassi.”

“Sure thing, O!”

Jaryn watched the kid fiddle around and let her eyes move back to Oblio when the music started. She had seen him dance some in the studio earlier, but it had been a move here and there, like she had seen from him other times they had hung out. She had never seen him perform; she had never seen him dance to a whole song. She found herself almost hypnotized by how raw he danced and how well he played the crowd – this was a whole different side of him.

She was reminded of Kerith. The same thing used to happen to him when he danced; he fell into his own little world, his own little persona. A pit formed in her stomach. Where was he right now? What was he doing?

“Ker,” she found herself mumbling under the music.

When Oblio had invited her into the circle after him, she had refused, melting back into the crowd around her. The redhead she had seen the first night went in after Oblio. A few people had danced after her and then everyone had dispersed for the night. Oblio and Jaryn had retreated to the edge of the building while everyone was chatting and making their way to the stairwell and after awhile they were left alone, the moon and lamps from the buildings around them lighting up the rooftop in a pale glow.

No one could reach them up there. Not even Tan.

Jaryn stood, waist against the wall and hands planted on the edge, eyes scanning the city. They lingered here and there, the Boglife Insurance building, the over ground tracks of the subway – she could see the Tandance building through some of the other buildings around them. A tall silver skyscraper almost blocked her view of it. It was right next to the Tandance building and emanated a purple light from the top. A sigh escaped her lips. She had been in the city for a few years now and felt like she barely even scraped the surface of what was there.

Ripping her eyes from the purple light, she turned her head to Oblio, whose gaze was glazed over in the direction of the Tandance building.

“What are you thinking about?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

She shifted and turned around, pressing the small of her back to the ledge. “Sure.”

Narrowing her gaze, she watched his eyes. She could see his pupils growing smaller, widening again when he snapped his eyes to her, keeping the rest of his body still. She arched an eyebrow at him. “I don’t believe you. What were you—“

He moved while she was speaking, gently pressing his lips to hers. Something in her mind protested, something small, ingrained deep in her brain, from her past. But she ignored it and returned the kiss, her hands grabbing at the front of his open jacket in between their bodies. She could feel her face growing warm.

When they pulled away from each other, he pressed his forehead to hers, blue pressed against dirty blonde, and he lowered his voice to a whisper.

“Jaryn, everyone who gets close to me… they get driven away.”

“By what?”

Oblio fought off a shrug and dropped his gaze to the ground. “Me, I guess. I’m my own worst enemy.”

“The whole Lone-wolf-with-a-motorcycle thing?”

He chuckled, pulling back from her, “Maybe.”

“What about all those people that just left? They seem to know you well enough, they seem to like—“

“Acquaintances.”

“Oh.” She let go of his jacket and turned to face the city again, resting her elbows on the ledge and placing her chin in her hands. “So if you drive everyone away then why did you just—“

“It felt right.”

“Why do you keep cutting me off?”

“Sorry,” Oblio let out another dry chuckle. “Come on, we should get you home. Can’t have your brother getting mad at me for keeping you out so late.”

She forced a small laugh. She didn’t want to tell him that she knew her brother wasn’t home yet. She didn’t want to tell him that she wanted to stay out longer either.

Jaryn knew that going into their empty apartment would only cause her to worry more.

She stayed quiet all the way down the stairs and spent the ride home with her eyes clenched shut, her thoughts locked on Kerith. Jaryn kept trying to force them to anything else. Dancing, the kiss Oblio had given her, running through the meals her regulars always ordered at the diner, but no.

Her mind always returned to Kerith.


	13. Chapter 13

Zero words were exchanged for four days straight between Kerith and Jaryn, Kerith finally breaking the silence one night when he crawled into bed next to her after a late shift at the diner. He stared at the back of her head for a moment before he let his gaze drop to her shoulder that was peeking out from under the blanket.

“Our anniversary is next week. On Friday.”

“Hnnngh?” Jaryn said into her pillow.

“Three years since we moved to the city. Want to do something?”

Kerith watched her move, her body forming growing and vanishing bumps under the cover as she turned over to face him—a hip, an elbow, a knee. Finally, her gray eyes were locked on his.

“You mean there will be a night that you aren’t going out with _them_?”

“Jare, I don’t go out with them every night.” He buried his left hand under his pillow. “You aren’t going out with _Oblio_?”

“Not on Friday.” Jaryn swallowed a mouthful of dry air. “Chinese buffet?”

“He hasn’t hurt you, has he?”

“What? _No._ ”

Kerith watched Jaryn shut her eyes and felt her curl her legs up under the covers. “Chinese buffet,” he murmured. He could see she had been drifting off; a fact that was proven when her foot reflexively hit his shin.

…

“So, Oblio.”

Oblio was seated in a chair on the other side of Dr. Tan’s desk, cross-legged with his hands in his lap, peering across the steel surface and stacks of paper to his stepfather. 

“Are you coming to the soiree this weekend?”

“What?”

“I’m holding a… _a party_ … at my estate this weekend.”

“For what?”

“To gather the dancers.”

Oblio only tilted his head slightly, in response. _A party?_

“You think everyone will just show up at your house for a party?”

Dr. Tan sat back in his oversized chair and threw his head back, barking a laugh. “Oh, Oblio. They’ll come if there’s money and fame.” He reveled in the expression of slight confusion that marred Oblio’s features. The boy had Bernice’s scowl. Tan would need that scowl. He would need the most from Oblio. “If I say I’m holding a soiree to find a dancer – or dancers – for Tandance to sponsor in competitions… how many of them do you think will bite and show up?”

Oblio felt his heart skip a beat.

“And I need you get Jaryn there. Her brother too, if you can manage. I need her more than him right now. Her elegance, her grace. She’s a well-oiled machine. Her brother hasn’t worked out all of his… kinks… yet.”

“If you need her the most, then why invite the others?”

He stood from his desk and moved around it, passing Oblio to the opposite side of the room where a row of cylinders hung from the tall ceilings of the man’s office. There were silver limbs filling some of them. The one in the middle though, that one was all gold.

“My prototypes,” Dr. Tan motioned to the silver forms as he spoke. “The Cyphers. They each have moves here and there, certain nuances that I’ve programmed in from watching some of the dancers. When I put them all together…” His hands moved to the center cylinder. “…they almost equal Bernice. A little _attitude_ here, a little _groove_ there. But she needs more.”

Moving his hands over some of the panels along the wall near the cylinders, a large image formed in the air in between them. It was a grid of faces. He recognized… he recognized all of them - most of them from the group that met every other weekend. The ones Tan had called _contaminated_. 

A laser pointer ripped through the hovering image of one of the faces.

“Mo. His sense of rhythm is almost unmatched.” The pointer moved. “Aubrey. Your mother had taste. She’ll need that taste back.” The red line ripped through a sweatband over a head of brown hair. “Emilia. Athleticism. Jaryn. Elegance.”

Oblio shook his head slowly. He was planning to lure the dancers here, get these… _intangible elements out of them somehow_ … and put them into Bernice. That gold thing hovering in that cylinder.

He stared at the laser beam which was currently shooting a red hole through Jaryn’s forehead.

“You’re not… _getting attached_ … are you, Oblio?”

Oblio’s lips thinned.

The laser pointer switched off and Oblio could see Tan through the image, clasping his hands behind his back. 

“We all know what happens when you try to make friends. Ever since I married your mother I’ve watched you damage relationship after relationship. You need help, _boy_.”

Oblio ignored the man and looked back to the grid, his eyes locking on Jaryn and her twin brother again.

“How are you doing this?” He spoke quietly, almost afraid of the answer he was going to get. “How are you getting these things from these people?”

“Science.”

“No, Tan. Tell me.” His voice grew louder as he stood up, his eyes boring through the hologram between them to the man’s face. “ _How are you doing this?_ ”

“Oh, it’ll just be a simple procedure.” He moved forward slowly, stepping through the hologram and warping it, stopping mere inches away from Oblio. “Just a few… needle pricks here and there… that’s all.”

Oblio could feel his jaw clenching and his hands forming fists at his side. He rarely grew angry, but this seemed out of hand. He thought he was collecting information from these people to plant in Tan’s project – information that would build and form in the mind of that golden heap of limbs – it would process and work together to give his mother back her movement, her style. Oblio would be the final part; feeding her information for her memories… he didn’t know they’d all be _experiments_. He opened his mouth to protest but was met with a tattered, old photograph Tan had pulled from his pocket.

It was Oblio and Bernice. They were seated on the steps of their old house. Oblio’s hair was black and he had a huge grin on his face. She had her arms wrapped around his neck from behind.

“Shhh, Oblio. Everything will be alright. Trust me.”

Oblio finally tore his eyes from the photo and looked over it to Dr. Tan.

“ _Trust me._ ”

…

Jaryn worked the early evening shift at the diner on Thursday and came home to an empty apartment. She had a text from her brother saying that he’d be back later and that he loved her. It left a bad taste in her mouth, like it always did now, and she found herself standing at the window, staring out across the street in front of their apartment. Her eyes moved up to the tall buildings surrounding theirs and she exhaled, the glass fogging up for a few moments.

She didn’t realize how long she had been standing there, and most likely would’ve stayed there lost in her head somewhere if her phone hadn’t started playing a Lady Gaga song on the counter behind her.

“Hey.”

_“Evening. What are you up to?”_

“Nothing exciting.”

_“Well, how about we make it something exciting?”_

“What did you have in mind?”

_“Unsure. It just sounded good.”_

Within the hour, Oblio had picked Jaryn up from the apartment and they were at a mini-golf course on the third hole of their first round. Jaryn recognized some of the others on the course that night. She saw a girl with smooth, dark skin talking to the girl with the red ringlets – two of the people from the rooftops and bridge, two of the ones she had seen dancing. A young girl with the same shade of skin as the first was jumping up and down trying to interrupt when the older one took her hat off and placed it on the young girl’s head. “Shuddup, sis. The adults are trying to talk.”

“You’re not adults!” The girl screamed back from under the hat.

Jaryn looked back to Oblio, who was crouched on the ground, chin to the astroturf, trying to find the perfect line from the ball to the hole. 

“ _Really?_ ” Jaryn smirked.

“I’m trying to return the ball to its home. Felt the wind, now I want to make sure I get the angle—“

“You want to win.”

“Maybe,” Oblio pushed himself to his feet and took his shot, sinking the ball. He was about to turn to Jaryn, pursing his lips and ready to add something to that when a voice cut him off.

“Hey there, Oblio. Who’s your friend?”

Jaryn hadn’t noticed the two older girls had approached, the younger one wandering around behind them with the hat still over her face.

“Oh. Hey ladies.” Oblio pointed to Jaryn with his golf club. “Jaryn, this is Aubrey and Taye. Aubrey and Taye, Jaryn.” He shifted the golf club to Aubrey and Taye, which Aubrey took no time in sneering at before tapping the end and pushing it away from her. She thrust her hand out after that, which Jaryn shook.

“Nice to meet you, Jaryn,” she said. Taye nodded her head as well, a genuine smile on her face.

“Likewise, both of you.” Jaryn returned the smile.

“You’re up,” Oblio leaned down and retrieved his yellow golf ball before stepping off the green.

Jaryn had moved away from them and went to putt and Aubrey took that chance to elbow Oblio in the side. “She’s cute, Oblio. Look at _you_.”

“She has a twin brother, you know,” he responded, injecting just a hint of sarcasm into his voice.

“Oh does she now?”

“What about Angel? I don’t think he’d like that,” Taye playfully asked Aubrey, rolling her eyes as she did. She looked back to Jaryn, leaning in a bit to the blue-haired man. “Is she a dancer?”

“She is.”

“Taye!”

Taye turned away from Oblio and saw her little sister trying to get the hat off of her head. “You got it stuck on your braids again? Come on, girl…” Taye wandered away, Aubrey giving Oblio a small wave and a wink before following her friend.

He watched them both get farther away, dread rolling into a sick ball in his stomach. Were they planning on going to Tan’s Estate the next night? What would happen to them if they did?

“Got it in two.”

Oblio was startled out of his trance, moving his head to the left to see Jaryn back in front of him, club in one hand and purple ball in the other hand. “Next?”

He nodded.

“You alright?”

He kept nodding.

They finished that round and played a second, him winning the first and her winning the last, then walked down to the beach, where they sat and watched the last rays of the early summer sun vanish. They had sat in silence since they got there, Oblio with his eyes locked on the horizon and Jaryn taking in the sights around them. She saw a kid knocking over a sand castle while his parents were packing up their beach gear, a couple laughing and sharing a milkshake, a tall blonde lifeguard sitting in a chair above everyone – he was absently knocking the inside of his left flip-flop against the bottom of his heel and talking to a girl with dark hair on the beach below him. She was twirling a volleyball on her finger and Jaryn recognized her from the rooftops. She was a dancer too.

When she finally let her gaze drift back to her left, she saw Oblio staring at her. He was leaning back, his hands planted in the sand behind him, and the breeze kept pushing his bangs away from his face. His eyes were narrowed and his brow furrowed slightly.

“What would you do to get your mother back?”

The question caught her off guard and all she could do was sit in the sand, shaking her head slowly and letting her lips work around words that weren’t coming out.

“Why?” She finally said.

Oblio wanted to tell her everything. Everything about Dr. Tan – his stepfather, everything about the party at the estate, everything about Bernice…

“It’s nothing. I was just thinking about her…”

Jaryn watched him as he looked back to the horizon. He didn’t say another word about it. 

It was almost midnight when she returned home and she found her brother seated in one of the vinyl beanbags. His head was back and his arms were splayed out over the sides. He didn’t look to her when she entered.

“Hey.”

He said nothing and only slightly turned his head away from her in response. 

Jaryn moved to him as soon as the metal of her keys hit the counter. She hovered over the beanbag and it only took moments before she had to step away from him.

“Drinking again?”

“I had _one_ glass of wine with dinner. I went out with Elya.” Kerith finally turned his head to her, the back of it lolling slowly over the beanbag. His eyes were red. “Were you out with your _Dark Prince_? How’s _Oblio_?”

She didn’t bother answering his question. “One? You smell like you swam in the wine cellar.”

Kerith responded only by answering his phone that had started to ring. “Cathedral? Yeah, I’ll be there in thirty.” He hung the phone up and slid out of the beanbag, pulling himself to his feet. He stood in front of Jaryn, looking down at her. “ _Excuse me_. I need to go get ready.”

“Yes, of course you do. Because you really need to _drink more_.”

He pushed past her and went into the bathroom where he began to pull makeup out of one of the drawers. She stood in the entrance to the bathroom and watched him. It was hard for her to stand there with him smelling like he did, but she stood her ground – arms crossed, head tilted. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. How did all of this happen?

“Like you even _give a shit anyways, Jaryn_.” Kerith began to smear black around his eyes like he did most nights of the week now. It was a second nature to him and every single time he applied it, it reminded him of when the two of them were doing the same thing in the bathroom of their old house three years earlier. They were laughing and that was _comforting_ , even though the laughter hadn’t lasted long that night.

"What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Just what it sounds like! You're spending all your time gallivanting around with _Oblio_ and leaving me alone."

"Alone?! You mean alone with those assholes you call _friends_? The ones who feed you booze and drag you around for amusement while they act like dicks? _Those friends?_ ”

“You don’t even know them, Jaryn! If you’d just spend some time—“

“Don’t even start that. I told you how I felt about them when we met them, they—“

He cut her off, throwing the eyeliner he had been applying into the sink. It left a long black streak in the basin. “Not to mention all the time you spend in _that studio_. I feel like I might as well be living here myself – I feel like I left you in that damn hellhole little town and came here alone—“

“Oh, now you’re gonna bitch about my dancing?! Since when?” She threw her arms up and retreated to the small living room, moving over to the kitchen counter where her keys sat, yelling back all the way. “Maybe I’m spending time with _Oblio_ because he’s actually been supporting my dancing unlike you—“

“You’re there _all the time_!” He followed her out, his bloodshot eyes standing out more thanks to the eyeliner and the scar that still marred his face standing out like a tiny exclamation mark – white against his flushed cheeks. His voice was raised. “I never see you unless we’re at work together! How is that even possible, Jaryn?! How is that _us_?! I see you at work and I watch you sleep—we have to _share a damn bed_ and I feel like I never talk to you!”

“So drinking makes it all better? Kerith, I—“

“It gives me _something to do_. It gives me something to go to while _you’re gone_.” His voice cracked.

“Kerith, you’re blaming _your drinking on my dancing_.”

“ _Oh god_ , sorry I’m telling the truth—“

“It’s unbelievable!” Jaryn’s voice was shrill now. “I wanted to get out of that shithole to get away from dad, to be with you and to dance. And now you’re gonna say that—“

“I didn’t realize it’d be _your life_! I didn’t realize _you’d cut me out to_ —“ Kerith stopped in the middle of his words, the screams coming to a halt and the apartment falling into a deafening silence. He had seen the realization dawn on his sister’s face just as he had come to realize what he assumed was the same exact thing.

They had turned into their parents.

Jaryn was shaking her head and tears were falling from her eyes. He hadn’t seen her cry like this in almost three years. He wanted to move over to her, but he noticed she was fumbling for her keys. The studio keys.

“Don’t you dare… Jaryn…” Kerith was shaking and he hadn’t realized he had pressed his shoulder against the apartment wall to steady himself. “Don’t leave… not now… don’t you do it…”

She picked up the studio keys and began to move backwards towards the front door, her head was still moving, back and forth.

“Jaryn…”

One question kept repeating itself over and over in her head.

_What are you gonna do – hit me?_

She knew he would never… but she had never really come across Kerith awake after he had been drinking. She was staring at him now, his side against the wall, slowly sliding to a sitting position. His eyes were locked on hers and his mouth kept warping from a sneer to a frown and back again. Was that still her brother?

“No…” Jaryn felt around for the doorknob behind her and left the apartment. “Keith,” she whispered to the empty hallway before jogging towards the elevator. 

Behind her, in the apartment, Kerith let out a growl and slammed an open palm on the countertop.

Inhaling deeply, he told himself to let it go for now. He had a club to go to. Music to bob his head to. Drinks to drink.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Language warning here - that's about it. XD

Kerith felt numb. The music around him sounded far away. His skin felt like ice despite the sweat that covered it.

Things around him weren’t registering fully. The only sense that was somewhat working was his sense of taste. He could taste the beer he was finishing off. His eyes were glazed over, his nose was clogged with smoke, his fingertips were tingling and his ears were ringing. His mind kept going back to his sister.

“Where’re Steve and Tommy?” He asked absently. Kerith was seated on a barstool with his back to the bar and his arms behind him and out resting on the surface. Elya was standing in front of him, perched between his legs, her hands playing with the buckles on one of the shirts Kerith always wore when they went to the goth club.

“They’ll be here soon. They had to stop somewhere and get something first.” She waved the bartender down and got two more beers, passing one to him.

“Sounds ominous.”

She giggled. “Everything sounds ominous to you.” She took a sip of her beer and set it down on the bar behind him then continued to fiddle with the buckles on his shirt, leaning closer to him and pressing herself against him. “I like spending time alone with you anyways.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just do. Maybe cause you’re a good dancer – that’s really hot y’know.”

When she mentioned dancing, Kerith’s eyes fell shut.

_Jaryn._

Had he really danced enough for Elya to notice it? Must have been the drinking. He wouldn’t have done it otherwise.

His thoughts went to his father.

A growl erupted from his throat and it was masked by the always loud music of the club. He opened his eyes to Elya finishing her drink. Kerith still felt cold, despite the warmth of her body pressed up against his and the beer he was consuming. He finished his glass and slammed it on the countertop.

“Going to the bathroom.” Clumsily shifting her away from him, he slid off of the stool and began to push through the crowd. He was mildly surprised at the fact that he was joined in the empty bathroom hallway by Elya, who had followed him there.

“Need any company?”

Through his haze, Kerith managed to look at her somewhat inquisitively. “Company to pee? No, I’m good—“

He felt a hand on his crotch and stopped.

“No, _silly_. Company for something else.”

Mere moments later he had been dragged into the women’s restroom and pushed into a stall, door slammed shut behind them – he could faintly feel Elya’s hands running up his shirt and was currently trying to wrap his foggy brain around the fact that their lips were pressed together.

He had only kissed one girl before and that was Penny Karsh, behind a shed when he was in second grade. Jaryn—

_Jane_

\--hadn’t talked to him for a week after that because her and Penny didn’t like each other.

There was something inside of him somewhere that kept telling him this was odd. This was wrong. This wasn’t what he wanted. But those small traces of coherency were shut out by the anger he was feeling at the situation he and sister were in as well as the alcohol he had consumed with dinner and since he arrived at the club.

Something was driving his hands against Elya, pushing her up against the door of the stall, and something was causing his lips to move from hers down to her neck, where he slid his tongue up to her ear and began kissing the soft spot under it.

“Ker…” she murmured, her voice muffled by his hair.

_Only Jaryn called him that._

Suddenly he pushed away from Elya and she was about to open her mouth in protest when her phone rang. She fumbled around, sticking her hand down the front of her corset before pulling the device out and answering it.

_“We’re out back. What took you so damn long to answer the phone?”_

Steve and Tommy were out back smoking cigarettes when Elya and Kerith emerged. Steve smirked at their disheveled appearance. “Did we interrupt something, sweetheart?”

Elya rolled her eyes. Kerith could only stare blankly down the alleyway at the moon that hung low over the buildings. He had been lost in his haze since stepping outside and the only thing that broke it was when Tommy put a pill in his hand. He looked down at it. It was green and had a smiley face on it.

“Take it,” Tommy said, one in his hand as well. Elya was popping one in her mouth and Steve had just swallowed one.

Kerith stared at it and began to raise it to his lips despite those same protests of coherency that existed _somewhere_ in his system, but stopped when raucous laughter and a yell sounded down the alleyway.

“Ha, what the hell is _this shit_?”

He could see four men making their way down the alley from the next street over. The haze was lingering and Kerith felt lightheaded, but he could still see them approaching.

“Oooo, the spooks are out tonight.”

“Yeah,” the short one in the back said. “Must be hopping in the freak club tonight.”

“What’s that in your hand, kid? Ooo, look at you -- with your makeup and your designer drugs.” The third one slapped the bottom of Kerith’s hand, causing the pill to drop to the ground.

The fourth one spoke up to his friend, “What’d you do that for dipshit? We could’ve taken that.”

The first one who spoke glanced back to Steve and Tommy. Elya was hiding behind Steve, already shaking from the pill she had taken. “Hey assholes, give us your drugs and we’ll leave you alone.”

“No,” Steve mumbled.

“What was that, kid?”

“No way, man. I spent a lot of money on these.” Steve was shaking too and it was audible in his voice.

“Aw, did baby spend all of his allowance on some pills for his little friends to play with?”

One of the men grabbed Kerith. “Hand ‘em over or we’ll ruin your friend. I mean, since his share was dropped on the ground and all.” Kerith could feel the man’s beard rubbing against the side of his face. It felt faint, much like everything else did. He almost felt like he wasn’t even there. His vision was getting darker, his legs, weaker.

Hours seemed to go by to Kerith in a matter of seconds.

Through the haze, somewhere far away, he heard the following. The sounds of which he would never forget.

_“Come on!”_

_“What about Kerith?”_

_“Fuck him! Let’s go!”_

There was some talking, some laughing and cackling around him. He didn’t register any of it for a minute or two. He could now taste bile in his throat and smell booze. Whether it was him, the men around him, or both, he couldn’t figure it out. He could only feel hit after hit as one or two of the guys pummeled him. Somewhere around him and above him as he crumpled to the ground, he could make out the words, _makeup_ , _fairy_ and _bullshit_. The phrase, “ _Jackson, you mighta broken his nose!_ ” repeated itself over and over in his head as well.

It wasn’t long before he completely blacked out.

…

Oblio had rushed to the studio as soon as he got Jaryn’s phone call. She was sobbing. He couldn’t make out many of her words, but he pieced together the fact that she and her brother had a fight.

“Hey, hey,” he said, after entering the room and jogging across it to the corner under the camera where she sat, her face buried in her hands. “Shh, it’s alright. Everything’s going to be alright. This’ll blow over.”

He sat down beside her and wrapped his arms around her, gently rocking back and forth like his mother did to him when he had a problem. That lasted for a few minutes before she finally started to speak, relaying all the details about the friends Kerith had made from art class, the drinking, and the fight.

“I don’t know what to do…”

“Jaryn, he’s your brother. Your _twin brother_ – you two have a bond. You almost share a soul, if you want to look at it that way. Everything will work itself out. You two have gotten this far, right?”

She stared at the ground.

“It might just take some time.” He leaned down, putting his face in her field of vision. “Time heals all wounds.” Her eyes finally shifted away from the wood floor to meet his. “You want to let some of that energy out?” He jerked a thumb back at the open dance floor behind him.

“I can’t.” She whispered. “Not now.”

“That’s fine. How about a ride? Want to go for a ride?”

She responded with a nod and he helped her to her feet, leading her out of the studio and locking it behind them for her with her keys.

He drove them to his spot in the woods along the coastline and set the same blanket out that they had eaten on that night he bought them both fast food. He sprawled out on it, stretching the corners of it out and then pulled her down with him. Within a few minutes, Jaryn was asleep with her head resting on his chest. Oblio absently stroked her head, weaving his fingers through the locks of dirty blonde hair. He could feel her warm breath on his neck and the slow rise and fall of her chest against his side. Her hand was on his stomach; her fingertips touching his skin where his shirt had rode up when he had set himself down on the blanket.

Oblio shut his eyes. It calmed his system to have her beside him like that. Somehow it felt so right to him. All he could hear was her soft breathing and the breeze rustling through the trees around them.

His mind was clear for the first time in months.

She shifted against him in her sleep, her hand riding further up his shirt. He didn’t open his eyes to her movement, but he gently tightened the grip of the arm he had around her.

He hadn’t brought up the party at Tan’s Estate. He couldn’t let her go. He didn’t want any of them going. He had talked to Tan about the situation again earlier that day. He wouldn’t need much from the others – he had used the term “a pinprick here and there” or something of the sort for the second time. But earlier that day he mentioned he would need Jaryn there for longer. Her process would be more lengthy, more involved.

Oblio couldn’t let her walk into that. When he had met her, he had been under the guise that he was just gathering words from her for Tan. As time went on, he learned more and more about what Tan had wanted to do to everyone, which threw an unexpected wrench in Oblio’s works. The other wrench? Jaryn herself.

He found himself able to talk to her, able to be around her for hours without getting uncomfortable. He was finally opening up to someone correctly and knew it wouldn’t last.

 _Just like everything else in my life_ , Oblio thought.

He thought perhaps his ease with Jaryn was coming from the fact that she shared traits with his mother, which must’ve been why Tan wanted her for his experiment so badly. Bernice had been the only one Oblio could ever actually talk to.

He opened his eyes and turned his head to look at Jaryn, her hair still wrapped around the fingers of his left hand. His reverie was broken by Lady Gaga and Oblio picked up Jaryn’s cell phone that she had left on the blanket beside her.

The letters on the caller ID made his throat close up. The phone couldn’t fit the whole name of the caller, but Oblio instantly knew what it was.

**JUSTICE HOSPI**

He softly shook her awake, gently pulling his fingers from her hair. “Jaryn, your phone.”

“Ngggh.” She grabbed it from him and slowly sat up, putting the phone to her ear. Oblio could tell by her tone that she assumed it was her brother. “ _What?_ ”

He watched as she listened to the speaker on the other end. Her eyes were still puffy from earlier and he noticed another few tears spill from them as the moments passed. When she finally hung up, she dropped the phone onto the blanket from the violent shakes that had suddenly seized her hands.

“Kerith’s in the hospital.”

“Come on,” he pulled her to her feet with one hand, grabbed her cell phone and the blanket in the other and sprinted across the clearing with her in tow. He was careful through the woods, holding certain branches out of her path on the way, and placed the helmet on her head, helping her onto the bike after he slid on. “Hold on tight, alright?”

He felt her nod against his back.

It didn’t take too long for them to arrive out front of the brightly lit building and Oblio pulled up right out front of the main entrance, holding her right hand while she steadied herself with her left and climbed off of the bike. He reached out and took the helmet off for her, like he had done many times before, holding it in his lap while she put her cell phone that had been in her hands back in her pocket.

“I’m gonna go. I don’t think your brother would be too happy to see me.”

He was about to put his helmet on when her hand hit the top of it, holding it down. She planted a quick kiss on his lips. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it, Jaryn.”

He watched her jog towards the front doors and enter before he sped off, leaving the parking lot in silence. He suddenly felt very cold inside.

He was unaware that it was the last instance he would see her for a very long time.


	15. Chapter 15

The white hallways she jogged through after getting directions from the nurse’s station were unsettling. They were almost too sterile and so very bright.

When she found Kerith’s room, she found the door cracked. A police officer was inside talking to a doctor. They were blocking his bed. She couldn’t see him from where she was peeking through the window of the door.

She couldn’t bring herself to enter, or even knock. She just stood outside, watching the cop and doctor speak to each other in hushed tones. When the officer noticed her, he joined her in the hallway.

“Twin sister, I assume? Jaryn?”

Her nod was slow. Her head felt like it was moving through molasses.

“Your brother was found in an alleyway behind a club a little over an hour ago. A man who takes that alleyway back to his apartment from the sports pub found him unconscious and called us. One of the nurses used your number from his phone to track you down. She could tell by the text messages that you two were related. I hope you don’t mind…”

She shook her head. “Is he… is…”

The doctor had exited Kerith’s room behind the officer. She stepped up beside Jaryn and placed a hand on her shoulder, “He should be fine. Do you want to go inside? He should be waking up soon. Officer Phillips here needs to ask him a few questions, but you should be the first one he sees when he opens his eyes.”

Her feet slowly started moving and the doctor gently herded Jaryn into the room and pulled the door shut behind her.

The room was dim, different from the hallways outside. The only light came from a soft bulb in a fixture over her brother’s bed. The rest of the room crept away into shadows. The only noises she could hear were the muffled chatter through the door behind her as the doctor and officer continued their discussion and the beeping of the heart monitor. She almost backed up against the closed door at the sight of her brother – she hadn’t even stepped a few feet past the entrance and she could make out the black and blue patches that marred his flesh, the fresh peels of skin that made up a gash here and there on his arms, the thin cuts on his face.

Between them all and under the dim light over Kerith’s bed, the small white scar on his cheek that their father had delivered years earlier stood out.

“Keith…” His name sounded just like his had earlier that night when she rushed out of the apartment -- whispered and in between sobs.

Dragging a chair up next to the bed, she seated herself and looked at the clock. All she registered was that the hour hand had passed two. She didn’t want to keep her eyes off of him for too long. She had been doing that too much lately.

Each bruise or cut that her eyes landed on caused a different scenario to pop into her head. If only they hadn’t had that fight. If only she had stayed there and kept him inside earlier. Jaryn couldn’t help but feel like this was her fault.

Her eyes were locked on a heavy discoloration that seemed to spread to the front of her brother’s neck from around the back. Her mind kept returning to that night in the old playhouse in their backyard. He tried to keep it from her then. He had been protecting her then and now she let him walk into this.

“Ja…” A slow exhale.

Her eyes shot up to his face. A pair of gray eyes that matched her own were staring at back up at her.

“Janey…”

Her head fell into her arms on the bed next to him as she cried, still out of guilt, but now mostly from an overwhelming sense of relief. She could feel his fingers gently running through her hair.

“Go on, say it,” he whispered, once her cries grew quiet.

She pulled herself up, rubbing her eyes. “Say what?”

_“I told you so.”_

“Why would I say that?”

He inhaled deeply, slowly, a few times, preparing himself and his system to relay the story to her. “It was them. They wanted me to take some pill Steve bought from some dealer. I was drunk. About to take it. Some guys came up the alleyway and threatened to beat me up if they didn’t hand over the pills. Needless to say, Steve, Tommy and Elya ran off.”

Jaryn could feel her face twitching. First her eye, then the corner of her lips. She could feel her hands balling into fists, wrapped around handfuls of the linen that was on Kerith’s hospital bed. Her brow furrowed.

“When they were leaving… I specifically remember hearing… one of them… ask—what about me. What about Kerith?”

“And?” Her voice almost echoed around them, the single word injected with a stern venom.

_“Fuck him, let’s go.”_

Pushing the chair back from the bed, Jaryn stood up, prepared to storm out of the room. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest and her eyes pulsating. Her cheeks were red and she could feel the dried trails of tears on her cheeks cracking as her face shifted into a sneer.

“Jaryn, please. Don’t.” Kerith grabbed her wrist, weakly trying to keep her near him. “Don’t leave me.”

She sat back in the chair instantly, pulling it back to the bed and wrapping the hand that had grabbed her wrist in her own. “I’m so sorry I let you walk into that. I should have stayed.”

“Jare, I would’ve most likely left either way. I was already drunk. I was irrational, stupid. It’s no one’s fault but my own, alright? Say it. Say that you told me so…”

“No.” She kept his hand in hers and leaned over, resting her head on his side. “Get some rest.”

“You’re not leaving, are you?”

“No, I’ll be right here.” Her eyes stayed locked on him as he drifted off and she watched him for what seemed like days until she was ripped from her trance by a bird outside.

She didn’t realize the sun was rising – that wasn’t surprising though as it was hidden behind clouds. Glancing at the clock on the wall of Kerith’s hospital room, she saw that it was almost seven in the morning. He was awake now and staring back at her.

“Ker, I have to go to work. The doctor told me they’d need to keep you here until later tonight or tomorrow. Are you gonna be alright until I get off work? I can take some time off and--”

_Ker. Only Jaryn called him that._

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me.” He swallowed, the bruises on his neck shifting slowly with the strength it took him to even do that. “You have to let work know I won’t be in today though.”

She smiled, an action which caused him to shoot a weak grin back at her.

“Of course. Get some more rest. The doctor should be in soon to check on you and the cop will probably want to talk to you too.”

“There’s a cop?”

“Yes.” She stood up and leaned down, giving him a kiss on the forehead, being mindful of one of the gashes that was there near his hairline. “Don’t be afraid to name names.”

When she left the room, she threw a hint of a weak smile to the doctor who was milling around the nurse’s station and tried to keep her composure until she got out of the hospital. As she stepped out into light drizzle that had started, she had the urge to kick one of the trashcans along the sidewalk, break the glass of one of the bus stop shelters and storm directly to wherever anyone who had seen her brother last night was hiding. Did those idiots really leave Kerith like that? With slow breaths in and out, she moved down the sidewalk back towards their apartment to grab her work clothes.

She could feel her heart hammering in her chest again.

…

The room was dark and the only thing Oblio could make out was the moon through a grimy window. What little light it gave him only assisted in the realization that he was tied to a bed or a stretcher of some sort. There were scratchy belts holding his arms and legs down and he could feel a cloth in his mouth, tied around his head. He sensed movement to his right and moments later something appeared in the moonlight next to him.

_“Hi honey…”_

There was a half of a face in the moonlight. He recognized it instantly as his mother. Oblio was only relieved to see her for a few heartbeats though. She moved further into the light and hovered over him. Her skin was peeled back across one side of her face to reveal that gold interior Oblio had grown to dislike so much. The skin seemed to be melting from her face, dripping off of her and onto Oblio’s chest. It burned through his shirt when it hit.

He writhed around, pulling at his restraints and growling against the fabric that was tied between his lips.

_“Oh, Obby, stop it. You’ll hurt yourself.”_

He could feel her hand running through his hair, her fingers a mixture of melting flesh and steel. She was leaning over him now, getting closer and closer—

_“Oblio!”_

Everything went dark and the moonlight was ripped from his view. He could feel himself moving though. He was standing up and he felt that he could freely move his arms and lips.

A spotlight fired up, focusing on a silver table about thirty feet away from him.

“Angel?” Oblio murmured.

Oblio realized the man was strapped down to the table. He also realized multiple silver arms were emerging from the darkness and creeping into the cone of light that fell over his fellow dancer. Oblio was already racing to the table when he noticed the scalpel on one silver arm, the needle on the next—he didn’t look at the others. He was already reaching for the restraints when that spotlight fell dark and Oblio’s hands met nothing.

Another one lit up to his left, about forty feet away.

“Aubrey!”

She was screaming, seated in what looked like an oversized dentist’s chair. There were multiple needles inches away from her legs and feet.

As he got to her, that light vanished too.

He did this for what seemed like hours. Back and forth. They were all people he knew from the group of dancers that gathered and they were all mere moments away from something horrible… and they all vanished when he reached them. Every single one he moved towards was screaming for his help and every time his feet started moving slower.

The worst part was the fact that even after the light went off and he couldn’t touch or feel them in the darkness, the noise of their protests and the machines around them had continued.

He had collapsed to his knees in the darkness, in a cacophony of screams and drills, only looking up when another spotlight switched on. Straight ahead of him, what appeared to be miles away was a blur of silver and purple.

Shooting to his feet, Oblio ran towards the blur as fast as he could manage. It seemed to get farther away from him the faster he moved. The spotlight over it went out and came back on mere feet in front of him, the purple and silver blur becoming Jaryn, strapped down the same way he had been when he encountered his mother.

Everything moved in slow motion for him. He tried to step forward, he tried to put his hand out – everything had trails and it felt like he was moving through something that was slowly growing solid. He was inches away from her, his hand brushing against the strap across her stomach when a set of pale hands appeared over her, already undoing the straps from her arms and legs. Turning his head to look up took a few moments, but when Oblio finally managed, he saw Jaryn’s twin brother.

Kerith pulled her off of the table, which seemed to evaporate upwards into the spotlight, and when he could visually make them out once more they were dressed differently. Their hair was different – it was shorter and a lighter blonde. Their gaze, harsh – eyes narrowed and lips thinned.

“Jaryn.” His own voice sounded muffled in his ears.

She was already walking away into the darkness. Kerith was still staring at him, arms crossed, eyebrow arched. He pursed his lips, slowly shook his head at Oblio and turned and followed Jaryn. The spotlight had slowly crept to Oblio and he could feel an intense heat growing inside him. It kept building until the light above him shattered—

And Oblio shot up to a sitting position, his hair stringy with sweat around his face and his chest rising and falling rapidly. He looked to the sky to try to discern the time, but was met with clouds and a warm raindrop or two on his face. It felt like early afternoon. He took a moment to cross his legs, rest his wrists on his knees and breathe in the air from the sea that drifted through the trees. He waited until his heart had slowed, his mind had stopped racing and he had cooled off before he focused on the events around him. Tan’s party was that night.

Oblio had dropped Jaryn off at the hospital and rode straight to the grove. He had meditated there for awhile and then watched the stars for a few minutes before falling asleep in the grass. It hadn’t been the first time he’d done something of the sort. Occasionally, he had found that he even slept better out there.

He pulled his phone from the jacket that he had been using as a pillow and found he had a text message from Jaryn.

_K was beat up behind a club last night by some guys. Friends left him there. Should be ok but I’m pretty pissed right now. Feel like it’s my fault somehow._

Oblio was ready to respond until his mind moved to Tan. Could he have something to with this? Oblio didn’t know the details of what happened to Kerith, but Oblio wouldn’t be surprised.

Pushing himself off of the grass, Oblio grabbed his jacket and his helmet and made his way through the trees to his bike.

He rode to the Tandance building in the drizzling rain and entered the lobby. The secretary recognized him at this point and never said a word when he walked by towards the elevators. Oblio entered the elevator at the end of the bay and it shot upwards to the top floor, where he exited and made his way to the double doors of Tan’s office, pushing them open to a room devoid of life.

There was furniture, robot parts strewn about, like usual… but no Tan.

What unsettled him right away was the fact that the grid was up. The grid of photos Dr. Tan had shown him of all the dancers. The blinds in the office were shut with only slivers of gray light sneaking in here and there. Besides that, the only light came from the numerous monitors and devices around the office. All the equipment was on and the holographic image was floating in the middle of the room with no one looking at it.

“Dr. Tan?” Oblio called out.

When he got no response, he walked into the office and set his helmet down on one of the couches near the door then slowly stepped towards the grid, one foot after the other. It was almost like he was in his dream again, unable to move quickly – unable to move _normally_. The faces of the people he had seen-- the faces of the people he had heard screaming in his nightmare only an hour earlier…

He stopped a few feet away, looking at each picture one by one. Oblio had been going over this in his head since Tan showed it to him. Why would he need all this for Bernice? It seemed like so much for one woman. Oblio would be the first to admit that she was one hell of an amazing woman – an amazing mother.

 _But all_ this _…?_

His gaze stopped on Jaryn, whose photo floated slightly above and ahead of where he stood. He sighed quietly as he raised his hand to the image, running his palm down the curves of her bangs against her cheek, his fingertips then tracing the slight upturn of her lips. The photo shimmered with his touch, going out of focus and distorting, almost vanishing the further he stuck his hand into it.

His hand passed through it and his fingers tightened into a fist. She was slipping right through his fingers, like everything else in his life.

He shut his eyes and dropped his hand by his side, stepping through the grid towards the monitors behind it. The lips of Jaryn’s image hit his forehead as he passed through.

Oblio tossed a quick glance over his shoulder as he approached the monitors and panels. The office was still the same, no one had entered behind him, his helmet was still on the couch, and everything was still quiet.

As he studied the machinery, Oblio began piecing things together in his mind. He saw notes on multiple versions of androids that Tan seemed to be working on as well as schematics and wireframe models on some up on some of the monitors. The ones that caught his eye were the small set of screens near the top though. He straightened his back and stood up, reaching for a knob on the bottom that was labeled _Brightness_. As he turned it up, he realized he was looking into the security monitors for the Tandance Building.

What was on said security monitors though… that was what made him freeze.

There was a camera on the front desk, some on a few hallways around the premises. But the one in the bottom right corner… it was a room with _hundreds_ of robots. They were lined up in rows of ten and all faced the north wall, towards the camera. When his eyes met with the monitor, Oblio had recoiled slightly. It was like they were all staring at him.

Why did Tan need so many androids to bring back Bernice?

_Is that…_

_Is that even his plan?_

Spinning on his heel, Oblio grabbed his helmet off of the couch and began stalking through the halls of the Tandance Building. He took his phone out and dialed his stepfather.

_“Oblio. Afternoon. Did you just wake up?”_

“Mmhmm. Where are you?”

_“I’m at my estate preparing for tonight. Why? Do you need me for something?”_

“No, I was just wondering. I’ll be by later.”

_“Good. I thought maybe you were going to tell me you were getting cold feet or—“_

Oblio hung up on Dr. Tan and slid the phone back into the interior pocket of his jacket.

He stalked down the hallways, boots clicking on the bright white tile underfoot, and came to a halt in front of a set of double doors. The panel beside it was glowing red and was asking for a passcode. He could never read his stepfather or have any idea what exactly the man’s plans were, but Oblio did know that he was horrible at making up passwords.

He typed _Tandance._

A buzzer.

_Bernice._

Another buzzer.

His lips thinned as the next thing popped into his head. Tan wouldn’t dare, would he?

_Jaryn._

A third buzzer.

Oblio let out a breath he had been holding and his fingers moved over the keys again.

_Cypher._

The panel turned green and Oblio shook his head and waited for the door to unlock.

_Leave it to him to make the password of a room full of his Cypher prototypes, Cypher._

But were they prototypes?

As he passed the threshold into the dark room, he let his eyes adjust and realized he was only a few feet away from the rows and rows of robots he had seen on the monitor. Their backs were to him – something he was very thankful for – and they were off, just like he had noted on the security screens.

What did Tan need them all for though? These surely couldn’t all be because of Bernice.

He reached out and ran his fingers over the arm of one. It was ice cold under his fingertips.

For some reason it made him think of Jaryn and the warmth of her body pressed against his. Why so many of these cold, lifeless robots when there were so many people, alive and warm, in the city—

_What are these for?_

Letting his eyes move from the metal he had been touching to the sea of metal laid out ahead of him, Oblio could feel himself slowly backing out of the room. His heart had started hammering in his chest and his mind began to fill with questions and voices – he couldn’t drown them out. He shut the door and headed back downstairs, ready to head to his stepfather’s estate.


	16. Chapter 16

Kerith told both the officer and doctor everything he remembered. The officer had left with three pages of notes, explaining to Kerith how he’d go about finding out who did this as well as finding his friends who had left him – their dealer too.

He had taken a short nap after that and awoke in the afternoon to a tray of lunch. He thanked the nurse and slowly began eating and when he was finished, he nestled back against the pillow and stared out of the windows to his left, watching the rain slide down over the glass. Somewhere in the hospital – or maybe it was a car outside – he could hear music.

His eyes drifted shut as his head bobbed absently with the beat. This was one of the things that caused his father to hit him a few years earlier.

But he was nowhere near Kerith now.

There was no one to stop him from enjoying the music.

…

The same car Kerith heard the music from had pulled out of the hospital and made its way through the streets of the city, passing the diner where Jaryn was working, and currently taking trash out.

She bobbed her head to the music as the car pulled up to a stoplight by the alleyway the dumpster was in, closing her eyes for a moment as she leaned down to pick up another bag of trash. When the light turned green and the car sped off, Jaryn sighed and threw the rest of the trash away in silence, squinting against the raindrops that fell on her face.

After she shut the lid of the dumpster, she turned to head back to the entrance of the diner and saw three people standing against the side of the diner.

She recognized them instantly as—

_The assholes that left Kerith._

\-- her brother’s so-called friends. Her hands, which were masked by latex gloves and covered in trash excess, balled into fists, her crooked nails digging into her palm and cutting through the gloves.

“What are you doing here?”

Tommy and Elya hung back by the wall of the diner under the awning and out of the rain, while Steve moved forward slowly, shifting a coin in his fingers. “We just came by to check on Kerith, sweetheart.”

“Check on him? You want to check on _him_?” Jaryn could feel every muscle in her body tense. “Then go to _Justice Hospital_ if you want to check on him. And don’t call me _sweetheart_.”

She noticed that Elya and Tommy flinched behind Steve at the mention of the hospital. Steve didn’t budge. “Why not? I think it suits you. It’s fitting. Your brother always talked about how wonderful you were.”

Jaryn felt her lips thin. Kerith talked about her to his friends, about how wonderful he found her and then she went and left him in the apartment the night before, alone, to go back out and stumble straight into danger.

“Why didn’t you get him out of there? Why didn’t you do anything?” Jaryn could feel her cheeks flushing with rage. The fact that they had the nerve to wander here in the late afternoon to check on what they called their friend, hours and hours after he had been hurt.

“To tell you the truth, hon, I was a little messed up and shaky. I had just visited my dealer and taken a—“

His words were cut off by a fist in his jaw. Remnants of the trash that had been on her gloves – a slimy piece of lettuce smeared with cold cheese, specifically – were now spread across his face, the blood that dripped from his nose tracing the outline of the lettuce that was on his cheek. The rain carried the blood downwards, splashing onto his shirt.

She felt a moment of shock at what she just did, but quickly controlled her surprise and stepped forward to Steve, who had fallen to his knees and was holding his face.

“Shit, babe. What’d you do that for?!”

There were traces of cherry pie and ketchup still on her gloves and when she heard babe she knelt down in front of him and stuck two of her fingers in Steve’s open mouth, hooking them into his cheek and pulling him towards her.

“ _Quit calling me your stupid pet names, asshole_.”

Jaryn made sure to slide her fingers out of his mouth slowly so the rest of the trash stayed there where it belonged. She then stood, peeling the gloves from her hands with two snaps and eyed Elya and Tommy with a narrowed gaze before looking back down at Steve, who was stumbling to his feet.

“I never want to see your faces again. I really don’t think Kerith does either.”

“Uh-huh, right. We’ll see,” Steve was mumbling from a swollen jaw as he backed up towards Tommy and Elya. “We’ll be back, _Jaryn_. Don’t you worry.”

“Mmhmm. I’m _trembling_ in my boots with fear.” She watched them vanish around the diner and she moved to the opening of the alleyway, turning her head to watch them until they were out of her sight. When she couldn’t see them anymore, she looked down to her right hand with a mixture of trepidation and awe. She hadn’t felt that sort of rush since dealing with Gregory in the back of the roller rink, or when she introduced that ashtray to her drunk father’s head.

Her knuckles were beginning to slightly bruise – she noted this as she walked back into the diner with a thin and satisfied on her face. She dumped the gloves she had taken off into the trash bin on the way back to the kitchen and threw a glance to the gaudy, chrome clock.

Only a couple more hours until she could go back to the hospital and check on her brother.

…

He found Dr. Tan in a chair by his indoor pool, sunglasses on and sipping a drink from a tall glass with a little umbrella in the top. Oblio dropped his helmet on the chair next to Tan and seated himself beside it, resting his elbows on his knees and leaning towards his stepfather.

“Did you send those men after Kerith?” Oblio asked, point blank.

“What?”

“Some men beat Kerith up in an alley behind Cathedral last night.”

Dr. Tan took his sunglasses off, replaced them with his spectacles and set his drink down on the ground to his left, sitting up and swinging his feet over the right side of the chair to face Oblio. He mirrored the way the other man was sitting.

“What do you take me for, Oblio? A monster?”

Yes. The word popped into Oblio’s mind in a heartbeat. He had no real reason to think that at that specific moment in time, but all the things he had been piecing together in his mind were guiding him in that direction. He always looked for the best in people – he had done so since he had begun his meditations – but it was becoming increasingly difficult to give Tan the benefit of the doubt.

“Are you sure you didn’t?”

“Why would I do that, Oblio? I need these dancers at their full potential. Full potential is not physically injured.”

“You’d do that to get to Jaryn.”

Dr. Tan tilted his head and stared at Oblio over the top of his glasses. “You _have_ grown attached, haven’t you? Isn’t _that_ adorable?” When Oblio didn’t respond, Dr. Tan pressed the issue. “Are they coming tonight?”

“Kerith is in the hospital.”

“And Jaryn?”

“I assume she’s going to be staying with him.”

“Assuming makes an ass out of you and me, _Oblio_. Why don’t you run along and get yourself cleaned up for the party in one of the guest rooms upstairs. Call your _little girlfriend_ while you’re there and find out what she’s doing.”

He was staring at the younger man, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Oblio was proving to be more trouble than Tan originally thought he would. He would have to keep a closer eye on him.

Grabbing his helmet, Oblio left the poolside and made his way through the estate, dodging the staff that was tasked with getting the party set up. He shifted upstairs and peered down the hallway towards the guest rooms. He had stayed in one when Tan was originally trying to court him into helping him with his plan concerning Bernice, so Oblio knew the layout of the estate.

The room looked exactly the same as it did before – lavish décor, an oversized bed and a huge picture window. The window was filled with gray clouds and obscured by the droplets of rain on the glass. He made his way over to the bed and sat down on the edge of it, putting his helmet at the foot of it. As he did, he could feel his phone vibrating in his jacket. It was a text.

_Hi. How’s your day?_

_alright. it could be better but i won’t complain. how are you?_

_Okay I guess. At work. Just got off break. Didn’t get any sleep last night so I just woke up from a short nap in the food storage closet._

_oh wow. nice. was it a good nap at least?_

_It was. It was too short but it was helpful enough. Refreshing. Had a dream about you._

Oblio inhaled slowly, pushing himself back further onto the bed and resting his back against the pillows. He was relieved to see that she was feeling better. Must have meant her and Kerith had patched things up somewhat.

_did you now? you gonna tell me about it?_

_I don’t know. It’s a little embarrassing._

_what? why? you can’t tell me you had a dream about me and then clam up about it._

_Sure I can. I just did._

_jaryn._

_It involved you and me and giant bed full of silk sheets._

Oblio dropped his phone at his side, shut his eyes and let his head fall back against the headboard of the bed. He could feel his cheeks flushing and his body growing warm at the mere thought of the dream she had hinted at and his mind raced back to the matter at hand. This was all going to be ruined if his stepfather had his way. Something would happen. Something always happened.

He would lose one of the only people that made his mind clear. Just like he lost the very few others.

He picked the phone up when it vibrated again.

_What can I say? I dream big. Maybe I’ll show you someday._

_i wouldn’t want anything more. i just have to hope that someday is sooner rather than later._

_Maybe. If you’re lucky. I should get back to work. They’re already going to wonder why my face is so red._

He tucked the phone in the pocket of his jacket and took it off, setting it on the bed by his helmet. He buried his head in his hands and began to slow his breathing. His heart had started hammering in his chest – most likely from the mixture of intrigue and _heat_ he felt towards Jaryn at that moment and the sudden flare of anger he felt towards his stepfather.

Pushing himself to his feet, Oblio shuffled slowly back out into the hallway, letting his eyes scan the corridor around him. He could hear the people on the floor below him, still setting things up. His eyes slowly moved to the staircase he had ascended, and then shifted to the right of that to the next set of stairs.

Tan’s personal office was one level up and in the west wing.

Moving one foot after the other, slow step by slow step, Oblio made his way over to the stairs and peered over the edge – no one was on their way up to the floor he occupied. Without hesitation, he began to make his way up to the next level. The staircase was too large and covered in red and black carpet which Oblio’s boots sunk into with every stair he took.

Tan’s personal office was a place he had also been in when the man was originally informing him of his plan. It was a large chamber with high ceilings and it was filled with similar equipment to the pieces he had in his office at the Tandance building, but not to the same extent. The floors were marble with oriental area rugs scattered about in different places. The desk was where Oblio’s eyes went though. It was a huge piece of furniture made of rich mahogany with a tall leather chair behind it.

He padded softly across the floor, making sure to stay on as many of the area rugs as possible. When he had to place his foot on marble, he did it on his toes.

Rounding the desk, Oblio’s eyes ran across six messy stacks of paper and files. He could see at least three notepads here and there, Tan’s chicken scratch writing scrawled across them. Oblio stood to the right of the desk chair and reached out, pushing papers around. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for specifically, he just knew he wanted answers to _anything_. Especially since Dr. Tan never straight out told him specifics.

A hint of color caught his eye between some of the papers and he reached his other hand to the surface of the desk, where he focused them both on fishing out this bit of color in the sea of lined notepads and printouts. He pulled out a purple folder with a plain cover, turning it over in his hands before opening it.

**STRONG ENOUGH TO LEAD**

The words were scrawled in a bold print, thick and black on a sheet of white paper. It was under two pictures, what looked like screen captures from some of the security tapes Oblio had brought back for Tan.

They were photos of Kerith and Jaryn.

Under the large print, Oblio saw schematics for three robots. In that same jagged font were the labels _D-Cyphers_ and _Bernice_.

His mind began racing again, the incessant voices of his, the questions. What was his stepfather planning? First the army of robots and now this? What was this?

As he stared at the photos of Kerith and Jaryn, he thought he should look around for something more.

The chatter in his head was cut off though when a needle was jammed into the back of his neck.

“You don’t take direction well, do you, _boy_?”

Oblio could feel himself being pressed down to the desk, the folder falling from his grasp and hitting the surface seconds before his face was pressed into it. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the photo of Jaryn. When he shifted his gaze, he could see Dr. Tan above him, holding him down. His limbs were getting heavier by the heartbeat and he could feel something oozing from his lips.

“This isn’t the guest room I told you to occupy.”

Tan’s voice began to echo in his head. He tried to protest and tried to ask questions about what he had found, but when he tried to move his lips Oblio found he couldn’t. His vision began to blur and that was when Tan ripped him away from the desk.

The man was a lot stronger than Oblio had taken him for, and besides noting that fact, he briefly stared in shock at the black liquid that was left on the papers where his mouth had been pressed.

_What…?_

“Come on, Oblio. Time out.”


	17. Chapter 17

Time out apparently consisted of Oblio being thrown back into the guest room he had been in before. Only this time he was locked in.

His head felt fuzzy and his hands were tingling - those were the first things he noted when he opened his eyes. Pushing himself away from the pillow, he saw a black stain on the pillowcase where his mouth had been. A glance out the window still showed the raindrops and heavy clouds and a glance to the clock on the nightstand showed that the time was 6:47 in the evening. 

Tan’s party was starting soon.

Oblio sat on the edge of the bed, shifting around slightly and feeling himself move. His whole body felt sore. He touched the back of his neck where Tan had jammed the needle through his skin. He couldn’t feel anything out of the ordinary. Moving his hands to his lips, he found the skin there was dry and cracked.

Tilting his head upwards, he peered at his reflection in the mirror across from the bed. His eyes had bags under them. His lips and chin were stained black and his hair was a disheveled blue halo. There was a spreading bruise along the left side of his jaw. He didn’t remember being slammed into the desk that hard.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

He looked to the foot of the bed to see a holographic image of Dr. Tan, who was already pacing back and forth across the bedroom, hands clasped behind his back.

Oblio only managed to grunt in response.

The image of Dr. Tan stopped pacing and approached Oblio, standing a few feet away from him and the bed he was seated on. “Are you going to play nice?”

Oblio ignored his question. “What are you planning?”

His question was also ignored and met with silence.

The holographic image crossed his arms over his chest. Oblio could picture him standing in his office upstairs, watching the guest room on a monitor and reacting accordingly. The thought made his skin crawl. He finally turned his head to look up to the real-time image of his stepfather.

“Don’t you want to see you mother again, Oblio?”

“Not at the expense of other people. Not like this.”

“Oh, please. I’m not going to hurt anyone—you act like—“

“This was never really about my mother, Tan, was it?”

The question caught Dr. Tan slightly off guard, but he regained his composure quickly and moved back to the foot of the bed, where he began to pace again, once more. “It was. Not completely. But it was.”

“Why do you have all those robots at the Tandance Building?”

Upstairs, Dr. Tan’s face twisted into a sneer. Oblio had been snooping more than he had originally thought.

“That’s none of your business.”

Back on the floor below, Oblio managed to push himself to his feet, stretching his muscles that had ached and grown stiff from whatever Tan had introduced to his body. He felt dizzy for a few moments, his vision blurred momentarily, but he steeled himself and waited for it to pass before speaking again.

“It _is_ my business. I’m the one who’s been helping you. You told me we were bringing my mother back.”

“I never said that we weren’t doing that. And that wasn’t a _we_ thing. _I_ would be bringing your mother back. You were just assisting by gathering bits and pieces for me.”

Oblio shuffled to the door, pushing the handle down and finding it locked. There was no noticeable way to unlock it either.

“Ah ah ah.”

“Why don’t you talk to me face-to-face?” Oblio said to Tan, his body still turned towards the door and his hand still shaking the handle.

“Because I have a party to get ready to attend. Now you stay here and think about what you’ve done.”

The image of Tan vanished right before Oblio turned around to face him. He was left in an empty room once more.

In his office, he double checked the stats for that hallway on one of his monitors. The guest room Oblio was in was locked – the door and windows.

He figured he’d leave Oblio there for a bit. He knew all the questions the boy had and all the things he had seen would drive him into that state he always got in when he was overwhelmed. Tan had seen it many times when he was married to Bernice. Oblio would retreat into his own little shell. Alone. And that shell would begin to slowly break him down.

Tan was sure he would do that again. Especially the little nudges here and there that Oblio would experience the longer he sat in the guest room…

And that was all he needed. Then Oblio wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

…

“If you have any problems you call us, alright? Any sign of anything out of the ordinary.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She handed him a few sheets of paper – his discharge forms and prescriptions for his pain medication. 

Kerith watched the doctor exit the room and slowly stood from his bed, heading towards the bathroom in the corner. His stomach dropped when he looked at himself in the mirror for the first time since putting makeup on the night before. There were no traces of the makeup left – they had cleaned it all off overnight – but the bruises and cuts that spread across his face were enough to make his breath catch in his throat. Some of them were covered with bandages, but not all of them and some looked like a sick representation of the makeup he had been wearing.

“Ker…”

His sister appeared in the mirror behind him and Kerith stared at her reflection. Her gray eyes were wide, inquisitive. Her hair, wet from the rain during her walk to the hospital. She was looking back at his reflection, swallowing a mouthful of dry air and trying not to let her expression twist into a frown.

He opened his mouth to say something to her, but her reflection vanished from the mirror and he could suddenly feel her behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist and her cheek pressed against his back in between his shoulderblades.

Kerith looked at his reflection for a moment more before carefully spinning around in her grasp and placing his arms around her.

“I’m sorry,” her voice was muffled by his hospital gown.

“It’s okay, Jaryn. It’s not your fault.”

“I shouldn’t have left—“

Kerith pulled back from her and placed a pointer finger over her lips. “Hush. We’re not arguing about this.”

“But—“

He pulled his pointer finger away and replaced it with his whole palm, his lips thinning and his eyes widening in an exaggerated fashion.

Jaryn grinned faintly. He couldn’t see the grin behind his hand, but he could tell by the way her cheeks shifted and the corners of her eyes upturned that she was smiling.

They were twins. Reading each other was like a second nature.

It felt good. All he had read from her recently had been anger and frustration. He removed his hand and started to turn back to the mirror to look at himself once more.

“No, stop.” She grabbed him and shook her head. “Staring at it won’t help. It never helped us before.”

Kerith could only deliver a numb nod in response. He had spent countless hours in their old house, staring at his bruises and scars in the mirror. She was right, it never did a thing.

“Brought your clothes for you.” She motioned to a bag by the door. “Didn’t think you’d want to leave the hospital in… your… goth stuff.”

He chuckled weakly and moved away from her to pick them up. He began pulling them out of the bag as he made his way back to the small bathroom. A simple pair of jeans and a green t-shirt. Perfect.  
He changed slowly, being very mindful of his injuries. Jaryn sat on the edge of his bed, flinching every instance he did – every time he accidentally grazed one of his bruises or cuts. He forced a smile to her after he finished, “I need to make sure I stop by the pharmacy on the way home.”

“Definitely.”

“But I’m _starving_.”

“Want to head home and I can pick something up for you?”

“Can we go somewhere and sit down and talk? I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

Jaryn stood and crossed the hospital room to her brother. “Three years,” she said, pulling at a piece of his sleeve that was folded up. “Chinese buffet?”

“God, _yes_. Please.”

…

Oblio found himself staring out the window of the guest bedroom, hands pressed against the glass and eyes glazed over. He had watched each one of his acquaintances show up to Tan’s estate. Dare and MacCoy came in cackling together. Emilia and Aubrey came in arguing with Angel in tow while Taye and Mo followed. They were discussing something and holding their hands out in front of them, describing something to each other and laughing. He saw dancer after dancer pull up, file in – he could feel the bass of the music under his feet.

He had already tried opening the window. No use.

His eyes met with the ornate chair in front of the desk and went back to the glass. They moved back to the chair again. That was when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye.

One of the framed pieces of art over the bed had become a screen. It was filled with static. He felt himself moving away from the window and shuffling across the plush carpet to the framed screen on the wall. The static cleared and he could see security tapes of Jaryn dancing. The footage was scratchy, there were waves of static through it, but he could see her dancing in the studio. The tapes switched to the sea of robots Oblio saw at the Tandance building. They were booting up. It shifted again and Oblio could see the back halls of Cathedral. He saw a girl in a corset stumble out into the back alleyway. Kerith was following her. He looked lost, like he was in some sort of daze. Suddenly the face of that gold heap of limbs Oblio had seen in his dream filled the screen. It didn’t move. It just… _looked back at him_.

Mere heartbeats later, the screen became the framed painting of a French countryside once more.

He could feel himself shaking as his hands met with the painting. He tore it off of the wall. It was a light wooden frame with a canvas inside. Oblio shook his head, fingers scrambling around the frame for wires or switches – _anything_.

He finally threw the frame to the ground, shattering the glass on the front.

He knew what he had seen.

The door. He tried the door again. Still locked.

His head was filling with voices, those questions again. They were growing quite overwhelming at a rate that alarmed him. Inhaling deeply, Oblio planted himself on the edge of the bed and began to breathe deeply, letting his eyes drift shut. He kept telling himself to calm down and let the feeling pass. Meditation always seemed to help him—

He heard a bang on the window and his eyes shot open.

Stumbling over, he planted his hands back on the glass and looked down.

On the ground below his window, standing and peering back up at him was _that thing_. That gold _thing_ that Tan said would become his mother again. Pressing his forehead against the glass, Oblio exhaled and shut his eyes tightly. When he opened them up again, the gold robot was gone. 

Without any hesitation, he grabbed his phone from his jacket on the bed and brought up his contact list, scrolling to Jaryn. Her voice would--

_No, that’s what he wants me to do. He wants me to get her here._

Oblio wouldn’t let that happen. He wasn’t even sure just what Tan wanted her – wanted any of them for anymore. 

He just knew he wouldn’t let her walk into this. Not now.

…

Dr. Tan straightened the collar on his jacket and stepped away from the mirror in the master suite of his estate. Crossing the hall to his main office, he stopped in front of the bank of monitors, focusing on the one that had the live feed of the guest room Oblio was in. He was seated at the desk now, furiously scribbling at a piece of paper. Tan had seen him pacing earlier. He had also watched him stare out the window, gnaw on his nails while seated in front of the bed and curl up in a fetal position on top of the cushy comforter. He had been all over that room, back and forth, mumbling to himself and talking to whatever was going on in his head.

There was a very small part of him that felt wrong about what he was doing to Oblio – especially because of how much Bernice had cared for her son and how Tan had felt about Bernice…

…but Bernice was gone. She would never know how Tan was treating him now.

With a thin smile, the man pressed a blue button on the panel under the monitors then moved towards the exit of his office and headed down to the wing where Oblio stewed in one of the guest rooms. He opened the now unlocked door a crack and peered inside. Oblio was seated on the edge of the bed, his jacket and helmet next to him. His back was straight and his eyes were red. His gaze moved slowly to the door where his eyes met with Tan’s through the sliver between the door and the frame.

“Are you ready to play nice?”

Oblio said nothing.

“Go downstairs and _dance_.”

Tan watched him pull himself off of the bed, gather up his jacket and helmet in his arms and stumble slowly out of the room, shifting down the stairs in the hall, one by one. 

Tan knew how Oblio’s brain worked and he knew that the boy would no longer be a problem – he would no longer be that wrench in the works of Tan’s master plan.

_Good._


	18. Chapter 18

“What happened to your knuckles?” Kerith asked his sister through a mouthful of Kung Pao chicken.

“Oh…” Jaryn put down the spoon she had been using for her soup and held her hand out to him. A light mix of black and blue spread out across the back her hand, mottling her pale skin. “They had a nice meeting with your buddy _Steve_.”

Kerith stopped chewing, his jaw dropping and his mouth hanging open; Jaryn getting a nice view of the chewed up chicken he hadn’t finished yet.

“What?”

“They came to see me at the diner. To… _check on you_ … Sweet of them, right?”

“And you…”

“He was calling me obnoxious pet names.”

Kerith thought back to the numerous times out with Steve and the others. Steve called everyone pet names. He felt a smile cross his face at the fact that his sister seemed to be the first to lash back at him for it.

“He didn’t hurt you, did—“

“No, I’m fine.”

Kerith swallowed a bite of chicken, set his fork and napkin on the table and stood, heading back to the buffet. Jaryn watched him, a sigh escaping her lips at the bandages he still had to wear. There always seemed to be something. Bruises, bandages, scratches. She wanted her brother to catch a break.

She wanted both of them to catch a break. Together. 

This song and dance had been getting old for years. First their father against them, the two of them against each other – what next?

The rest of their meal was littered with conversations and shared memories of their mother, Stephanie. They also talked about Pearl and made plans to call her at some point over the next week. Overall, it was a pleasant meal. The first one they had together in a long while.

As they made their way across the bridge back towards their apartment, ignoring the light rain that sprinkled from above, Jaryn stopped and turned back. 

“I left my phone on the table.” She motioned the way they were headed. “I can walk you back the rest of the way and then go get it.”

“Jaryn, I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“Promise. I’ll be fine.”

Kerith headed back to the apartment alone. He thought about taking a shower and then going straight to sleep. His mind went to his sister’s bruised knuckles momentarily, but fell back on the thought of a hot shower after their apartment building came into view.

…

Tan had told him to dance but he knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on any real form of movement feeling like he did, so Oblio sat in an alcove of the main hall of the estate, jacket on, headphones on and helmet beside him on the ledge he was tucked into. His knees were pulled up to his chin and his arms were wrapped around his legs. His music was loud enough that he could hear it, but not loud enough that it completely drowned out the music pumping through Tan’s estate. Nothing was loud enough to drown that out.

His eyes shifted, darting back and forth to all the people he knew, all the dancers he had shared a common bond with and met at different places around the city. He couldn’t tell them anything, they wouldn’t believe him. But he knew he could warn at least one person. One person who just might listen.

The paper in his pocket was there for that reason alone. 

Oblio was worried if he tried to leave the estate, Tan would stop him somehow. Or even follow him. It was a chance he had to take though. He had to get out of the city or he would lead Tan right to Jaryn and Kerith. Oblio knew Tan would get to them sooner or later, but with him still in the city it would be much easier for him to reach them. 

But now, with Tan busy overseeing his party… this would be Oblio’s only chance to warn her. He knew that he couldn’t come right out and say all of this-- this mess that he had fallen into for what he had to admit to himself were selfish reasons. Did he really think he’d be able to get his mother back?

With a deep breath, Oblio grabbed his helmet and began to shift through the bodies moving on the floor. He moved quickly, but not fast enough to attract any unwarranted attention. He was quite sure Tan was watching him on one of his many monitors, but Oblio was counting on the fact that he wouldn’t make a move with all these people around. 

He shifted through MacCoy and Dare, who were dancing together; moved past Angel, who was asking Aubrey to dance and Mo threw a smile at him as he passed. Oblio forced the hint of a grin in return. _Nothing to see here._ He was just stepping outside for some fresh air in the other’s eyes.

Tan watched him in his office above, following him through the crowd on one monitor, then moving his gaze to another. One that showed the front of his estate, where Oblio’s motorcycle sat and where the boy was now placing his helmet on his head and mounting the bike, speeding off away from the estate without a single look back.

He didn’t need him right now. He would help speed up the plan, but with the way he had been acting, Tan knew he would’ve been a hindrance. It would take him a little longer to reach the twins with the boy gone, but he would manage. 

Tan's cackles echoed throughout the upper floor as the motorcycle became a small lighted speck down the street. He knew the boy would run away.

He also knew that somewhere down the line, the boy would be back. He always came back.

…

He lost track of how many minutes he stood under the almost scalding stream of water, eyes shut and dark blonde hair matted to his forehead. His cuts and scabbing-over gashes here and there screamed in pain as the water hit them, but he was used to it. He had been through it all before. Kerith had learned how to ignore it.

It felt good to him, almost, to do this. He wanted to wash away everything he had done. Every one of the few times he snapped at his sister, every drink he had consumed, every stupid thing he had let Steve and other talk him into, the messy makeout session with Elya, the faces of the guys who had beaten him into the hospital, his father, Gregory—every horrible thing that had happened to him. Every horrible thing that had happened to _them_.

He wanted those things gone. He wanted to forget them.

He scrubbed himself furiously, only easing up when he reached a bruise or a pucker of raw skin or a now-wilting bandage. It should’ve hurt. But he didn’t let the pain register.

Kerith followed up the shower with a glass of milk and two chocolate chip cookies; something that had reminded him of his childhood. He sat cross-legged at their mismatched dining set, clad in a pair of simple pants and a t-shirt, staring at the cookies on the napkin in front of him.

His thoughts were getting away from him again, back to the discussions he and his sister had shared over dinner about their mother when a weak knock on the door pushed him out of his trance. He hesitated for a moment before slipping out of the chair and moving towards the door, his bare feet shuffling over the worn carpet of their apartment.

Peeking through the peephole, he saw pale skin and a shock of blue hair. 

_Oblio_.

Kerith could feel that emotion bubbling up again. The one he always felt when the subject of Oblio came up. He couldn’t put a finger on what it was, but he could definitely recognize it. He clamped down on it, telling himself to stop and took the door handle, waiting a few seconds before opening it.

The other man was down the corridor at this point, almost back to the elevator at the opposite end. He turned around when he heard the sound of the door and Kerith was met with the all too familiar face of someone who had recently been abused in some way. Even from down the hall, he could see it. Oblio had been crying and his now bloodshot eyes had that hollow look that Kerith had seen in the mirror so many times.

He couldn’t see any visible marks on Oblio. But that didn’t mean mental abuse hadn’t taken place.

_Or emotional abuse._

The negative feeling Kerith had felt rising in him had drained instantly when he saw Oblio’s expression and they seemed to stand there for a multitude of heartbeats, eyes locked and respective thoughts racing when Kerith managed to stammer something out.

“Are you… are you okay?”

He watched as Oblio’s gaze dropped to the ground in front of Kerith. Then he shook his head slowly and turned away, entering the elevator. Kerith didn’t take his eyes off of Oblio’s face until the elevator doors shut. Even then it took him a few moments. The image of Oblio tightly pressing his eyes shut right before the doors closed between the two men was one that would stay with Kerith for a long while. It would keep reappearing in his mind for months afterwards. 

He finally moved his gaze away from the elevator at the end of the hall to where Oblio had looked: down at Kerith’s feet.

There was an envelope there, a white speck in the ratty and stained dark red carpet of the hallway. When Kerith reached down to pick it up, he could see scrawled across it, in a hasty and lopsided form:

_jaryn_

Kerith took one last look to the elevator before backing in to the apartment and shutting the door with his shoulder. He dropped the envelope on the kitchen counter and stared at it momentarily before looking at the small wicker basket with the studio keys inside. Grabbing those, he dropped them into his pocket and sat back down at the table to eat his cookies and drink his milk.  
The keys in his pocket were there as a worst case scenario to him. If whatever was in the envelope reflected how Oblio looked, he didn’t want his sister experiencing it somehow and running away from him again.

He had savored every bite of the cookies and finished the glass of milk, his eyes going back to the counter every minute or so to land on the envelope. He looked away from it quickly when he heard a key in the door. Kerith stood as the door opened and carried his empty glass and napkin into the kitchen.

“The waiter held my phone for me so no one would take it. I slipped him another tip for that, that was really—“

Jaryn had been rambling as she entered the apartment, but stopped when she saw Kerith’s expression. She watched as her brother’s eyes honed in on the envelope bearing her name on the countertop. Making her way to the counter, she noticed her brother open the fridge and sort of stand there; absently scanning over what little they had inside. 

She opened the envelope and took the paper out of it, Kerith could hear her doing so behind him. Again, he was afraid of what it could have said and with the look Oblio had on his face, Kerith couldn’t bear to see his sister deteriorate like that too. He just stuck his head in the fridge and stared at the milk, pretending to graze for something to munch on. 

Jaryn wandered to the window as she read, finishing the letter and letting her eyes drift over it again and again.

_Jaryn,_

_I’m really sorry to do this – especially to you - but I have to go. I’m in danger if I stay in the city right now and I don’t want to inadvertently put you and your brother in danger as well. You two have been through enough. This isn’t goodbye forever, I hope, but at the moment I’m already on my way out of the city._

_Be careful who you align yourself with in the future. You’re smart, I know you will. But just keep your eyes open. There are people who are always working with hidden agendas and it would be painful to think that you might have fallen into the hands of one of them._

_I really wish I could say more, but I’m already taking a risk by writing this to you. I hope you’ll find it in your soul to forgive me one day._

_Stay safe and stay strong._

_You mean more to me than I could ever put into words and I’m extremely fortunate to have met you._

_Oblio_

“What is it?” Kerith’s voice sounded so far away.

Jaryn took a few moments to swallow a lump in her throat before turning to her brother. She was trying to hold back tears. “It’s an _It’s-not-you-it’s-me_ letter, to put it bluntly.”

Kerith had shut the refrigerator and was standing at the kitchen counter now, hands flat on the surface and eyes locked on his sister. He could easily see how hard she was trying to not cry and he watched as she moved back towards the kitchen and set the letter down gently on the surface. She watched it for a few moments and then reached out for the wicker basket, her lips thinning when she couldn’t find the studio keys. 

That was the point where she shut her eyes and let the tears spill over, resting her arms on the counter and dropping her head between them. Kerith was already rounding the counter towards her and he took her in his arms, pulling her to him and dangling the keys in front of her face.

“Let me come with you--”

He waited until her gray eyes made their way from the keys to his face.

“--to dance.”

“Ker, you’re hurt…”

“I don’t care. We’re gonna dance. I’ll be fine. Go get your bag.”

He gently herded her towards their bedroom to gather her things and took the chance to lean over the counter and let his eyes travel over Oblio’s letter, word after word. His eyes narrowed at the signature. 

_What the hell is he going on about?_

When Jaryn appeared beside him, Kerith wrapped his right arm around his sister’s shoulders and led them out of the apartment and into the elevator. 

The rain was still falling, just a drizzle at this point. They didn’t exchange any words on the way to the studio, but Kerith’s random squeezes on Jaryn’s shoulder kept reassuring her that everything would be alright. Everything would get better.

They always hoped it would.


	19. Chapter 19

Just like anything and everything else good that came into Oblio’s life, he was successful in driving Jaryn away. He didn’t want to; he had no real desire to leave the city she lived in – no real desire at all to leave her side. Watching her dance put him at ease, talking to her made him smile; feeling her on the back of his bike pressed against him always gave him a welcome shiver up his spine. Not to mention the phone conversations they had late into the night and the texts they sent to each other – he didn’t want to give up any of that. None of it.

But he knew he had to.

He could feel his jaw clench and his lips thin. Oblio had to quell the sudden anger he felt towards his stepfather. That emotion wouldn’t help him one bit at this point in time – it never helped him before. He loosened his shoulders and the grip on the handles as he sped down the highway away from the city, reaching up every so often to wipe the rain from his visor. He would find a motel to stay in for the night. He would meditate. 

Then he would vanish.

Before he fell asleep that night in the musty smelling room he rented, Oblio reached across the bed and grabbed his phone. The springs of the mattress he was on squeaked with every inch he moved. Staring at the screen for a moment, he scrolled through his contacts and landed on Jaryn’s name. There was a photo of the two of them sharing some of his favorite ice cream from the parlor down by the beach.

_“What the hell is Blazin’ Blue Raspberry?”_

_“It’s the best thing you’ll ever taste, Jaryn. Besides my lips, of course.”_

_“Oh my god, that was horrible.”_

_“I know, sorry. I couldn’t resist.”_

He swallowed a mouthful of dry air as the simple exchange came back to him. His finger hovered over the call button, but he only ended up sighing and dropping the phone in bed next to him. When the screen faded to black, Oblio was left in the darkness. Hours passed before he finally fell asleep.

…

They had arrived at the studio, Kerith finally letting go of his sister to wander over to the stereo. He had a whole slew of mix cds that they had cobbled together here and there since they had arrived in the city and he grabbed one out of the beat up book of sleeves they had them stored in, placing it into the stereo system. He hit play and was prepared to say something to her about their collection of music when he turned around and saw her with her arms wrapped around herself, holding back tears again. It wasn’t that face he was used to though, the small frown and the lip bite. She looked _angry_.

Dropping the book on the ground by the stereo, Kerith moved to her and tried to pry her arms away from her.

“What is it, Jare?”

She began to cry for the second time that night and it hit Kerith in the heart just like the first time did. He let go of her arms as she moved her hands towards him, her fingers tracing the bruises and cuts that were visible; his face, his neck, his arm. The stern, frustrated expression she wore didn’t match the way her fingers gently grazed his injuries.

“Why can we never get away from this shit?” Jaryn suddenly hissed, her voice dropping to a whisper after that. “What have we done wrong? We either get beaten or we get left. _What have we done?_ ”

“We’ve done nothing,” Kerith’s voice hit her ears over the soft song that opened the cd he had put in. He hadn’t had a chance to turn the volume up before his attention was diverted to her.

“What’s wrong with us? What did we do to deserve it all?”

“ _Janey, we’ve done nothing._ ” He pulled her to his chest and felt her tears soak into his t-shirt. They pressed against one of the gashes in his chest and he felt it sting slightly

 _salt in the wounds_

but he ignored it. Pulling her back, he brought his hands up to her face. “Stop crying. No more tears.”

She blinked once. Twice. Pressed her lips together. She moved her gaze above him, attempting to keep another round of tears inside. It looked like she was just giving up. It looked to him as if – in that single moment – she was _done_.

“Look at me.” He waited until she forced her eyes back to his face. “You have me. You always will.” He had her face in his hands still and he could feel her nod slightly.

“I’m here for you too, you know that,” she finally whispered.

“We have each other and that’s it. That’s all we’ve needed since Mom died. Why change now, you know?” He let his hands fall to her shoulders. “It’s us against the world, _Jaryn_.”

She looked into his eyes – an exact match of hers – the only ones she could trust, and nodded vigorously. 

He took that moment to wrap an arm around her waist and grab her other hand, sweeping her in a circle. “Now suck it up and dance.” 

Kerith was relieved to see her release a deep breath in what appeared to be a weak chuckle and then take his hand in response, placing her free hand on his shoulder. Waltzing was no big deal to him – he had been a star pupil when they did ballroom dancing as children. Something about the elegance of it all was hypnotizing to him as a young beginner. He knew Jaryn wouldn’t waltz with him all night though. To get her feelings out, she really needed to move.

Once the first few songs were over, a Lady Gaga track came on and Kerith let go of his sister after her face brightened considerably. He waved to the floor and began to back away when she stopped him by grabbing his hand.

“No.”

“Why?”

“You came here to dance. You want me to feel better right?”

“Oh, so you’re gonna blackmail me now?” Kerith smirked.

“Come on…”

“Fine.”

They stood side-by-side, staring at the wall of mirrors and Kerith watched his sister dance for a few moments. He pushed thoughts of their father out of his head for good – as well as thoughts of the clubs he had been to and the way he drank then danced wildly at those. The fear of their father was irrational, he knew this, but he never forgot. Dancing had gotten them in trouble before. Why couldn’t it get them in trouble again?

Three hours and three cds later, they sat on the floor, breathing heavily and laughing. 

“I need to get back into shape,” Kerith collapsed backwards and stared at the ceiling. “I used to be able to dance all day and physically feel nothing.”

“Then let’s do it,” Jaryn crawled over to him and settled herself beside him, raising her hands to the ceiling. “Let’s dance. What do we have to lose? What else do we have to do?”

He turned his head to look at her, a wide smile spreading across his lips. She was right.

…

_Perfect._

“How darling,” Dr. Tan stared at the monitor he had watching the dance studio. He had been ignoring the monitors in his own estate, knowing that all the people downstairs were still dancing the night away. No care in the world.

He was more interested in the fact that the brother was now ready to dance again. He was also quite amused that Oblio, running away like he did – and leaving that note for Jaryn – drove the twins right to the studio for Tan to watch and practically pushed Kerith back into dancing. Now they’d be ready soon. Ready for Tan to “discover”…

“Thanks, _boy_.”

He would leave the two of them alone for a month or two. Let them practice together, build up their skills once more. Then he would strike. 

…

Jaryn noticed Kerith moving more during the month after his trip to the hospital, the month after Oblio disappeared, the month after Kerith began to dance again. He would move to the radio, bob his head to commercial jingles, grab her hand and twirl her around to a ringtone. He looked happier and that was a comforting fact.

They practiced at the studio whenever they got the chance. They were slowly growing back into unison – something they excelled at when they were kids. They would go out to clubs at night, a different one every week, usually in outfits that complimented each other in some way. After awhile, people would stop their own movement to watch them. 

There were whispers that moved through the clubs when they would walk in, whispers of awe or envy. They were becoming something. Other dancers were starting to notice.

_“Have you seen those twins?”_

_“They work at the diner down the street.”_

_“Where did they come from?”_

“Isn’t that Oblio’s girl?” Taye elbowed Aubrey one night, motioning to the two people on the lower floor of the club they were hanging around that evening. “Where has he been anyways? I haven’t seen him in…”

Taye had trailed off. It had been awhile.

One night, well past midnight, after returning from a night out, Jaryn let Kerith shower first and seated herself at the counter, downing a tall glass of water. The sweat on her forehead had dried and her feet were in pain. It was a good pain though. A welcome one.

They were dancing again. Both of them.

Her eyes landed on Oblio’s letter, which was folded up neatly and back in the envelope which was stuck in the back of the wicker basket that usually held their keys. She stared at his handwriting, her eyes following the loop he had made in the bottom of the J. Pulling her phone from her pocket, she moved through her contact list until she reached “O”, where his name was the only entry under the letter.

She wanted to ask him what he meant in his letter. Specifically. She had wanted to do so many times since he had left, but never could bring herself to call him.

Her thumb stopped less than an inch away from the green icon of a phone handset. She stared at the photo she had put as his contact picture.

It was a picture of him in a purple sleeveless shirt, bits of fishnet here and there over his chest. He had on a pair of white Wayfarer sunglasses and was attempting to shove a giant handful of cotton candy into his mouth. She remembered how she called that “so attractive” and he responded with, “I can fit more watch me” and began to pull handfuls from the bag they had bought along the boardwalk. He ended up with cotton candy on his sunglasses and in his hair when a breeze hit them. 

“Pink looks good on you,” she told him.

“Mmfmffffnh,” he had responded, still trying to take care of the cotton candy in his mouth.

She remembered later that evening after the sun set, when he pulled her in between two of the rows of shops on the boardwalk, stuck his sunglasses in the back pocket of his pants and pushed her back against the wall of one of the shops, pressing his lips to hers. 

He tasted like cotton candy.

“Jare?”

She set her phone down on the counter, pushing it away from her and turned to find her brother drying his hair with one of their old towels. 

“Shower’s yours.”

“Thanks,” she said, slipping away from the counter and passing him, entering the bathroom and turning on the water.

“You okay?” He leaned in the doorframe of the bathroom.

She turned and was met with his wide eyes. The shorts he wore were almost the same shade of gray as his gaze and she could see scars on his chest where his injuries had healed – the most recent ones more prominent than the older ones from their father. 

“Of course,” she murmured.

“Just checking.” 

He vanished and left her to clean herself up, moving out into the kitchen to find something to eat. It was almost two in the morning now, but dancing always made him hungry. He grabbed a bag of chips from the counter and unrolled the top, pulling a handful of them out. He accidentally dropped a couple and brushed them into a pile on the countertop, scooting one off of Jaryn’s phone that sat on the counter. 

Leaning down closer to the phone, he saw that she had been on Oblio’s contact screen when he had interrupted her. It wasn’t the first time he had seen her phone left somewhere like this. But like every other time he had found it that way, he sighed and exited back out to the main screen. As far as he knew, she hadn’t talked to him since before she received that letter. She had told Kerith that Oblio was the one who took her to hospital to visit him after he was injured – that was the last time she had seen him.

He finished the chips he had pulled out (the ones that hadn’t fallen on the counter) and cleaned up the discarded ones before wandering to the television and turning it on, flipping through channels. 

When Jaryn emerged from the bathroom dressed in an oversized t-shirt and a pair of flannel pants with a hole in the right knee, Kerith motioned her over, patting the empty seat. He didn’t have to say anything. He had found a Lady Gaga documentary for them to watch. 

When they mentioned that her real name was Stefani, the same thought crossed their minds.

_Sounds like Stephanie._

Jaryn felt Kerith grab her hand. The name wasn’t exact, but it was close – somehow comforting, as well.


	20. Chapter 20

Summer was turning into autumn and business was picking up at the diner again like it always did that time of year. People didn’t want to eat at restaurants with outside seating anymore because it was getting chilly. They usually got the same shift and spent most of it working with the music that was always playing through the speakers at the tables. The jukebox at the front of the diner always played something catchy – something Kerith would collect dishes to while tapping his feet or something Jaryn would shift her shoulders back and forth to while picking up orders from the pass. 

Everything was making them move.

One night in October, when Kerith and Jaryn were dressed in similar outfits with orange accents, they stood on the upstairs level of one of their usual clubs in the center of the city, shirley temples in their hands and feet moving to the music. They weren’t dancing together in the center of crowd at that moment, just absently dancing with each other, Kerith singing along to the song that was playing.

This was interrupted by someone who had made their way upstairs and sat down in one of the seats in the area they were occupying. Kerith noticed first, stopping his sing-along and dropping his arms. Jaryn stopped dancing and followed Kerith’s gaze behind her. They both took a sip of their shirley temples at the same time as they watched the man and he watched them back.

“Can we help you?”

“I don’t know, _can you_?” the man said.

Kerith gently pushed past his sister and set his glass down on the low table between him and the man, leaning towards him. “Maybe if you’re more polite than _that_. Our parents told us not to talk to _strangers_.”

The man reached forward and held a hand out to Kerith, running a long finger along the scar on his cheek.

“And where are your parents now?”

Kerith’s could feel every muscle in his body tense. He could feel Jaryn’s hand on his back. 

The man continued, “I only say that because you two look like mature adults. You can make your own decisions.”

Jaryn could feel her brother relax, but only slightly. He still stared the older man down with narrowed eyes.

Sticking his hand out, he spoke firmly. “I’m Dr. Tan.”

Kerith looked at the man’s hand, then back up to his face.

When Kerith didn’t take it, he continued. “I’ve seen you two dance. You’re _wonderful_. A magnificent sight to watch.”

Taking his hand warily, Kerith shook it. “Kerith.”

Jaryn reached around her brother and took Tan’s hand afterwards. “Jaryn.”

“Nice to finally meet you both.” He waved a hand towards the club around them. “I hear whispers about you here and there. The _twins_.” 

“Do you?” Kerith said, his question almost drowned out by the music still playing downstairs.

“I do.” Dr. Tan leaned back, motioning for them to sit on the low couch across from him. When they did and once they were settled, Tan leaned forward once more and continued the conversation he had thought about having for the past couple of months with them. “I’m starting a competition here in the city for dance crews soon.”

“And you want our help or something?” Jaryn shifted closer to her brother without thinking about it, her chin hovering over his shoulder. Where did this guy come from? Had he been watching them in the clubs? _At the diner?_

“In a way.” Tan pushed his hands forward, palms to the ceiling. “I want you two to be _my_ crew.”

“You want to sponsor us?” Kerith leaned in, Jaryn absently following him.

“Exactly.”

“What would that mean for us?” Jaryn asked.

“Well, you’d move into a special apartment near the Tandance Building – a penthouse at the top of the building next door. It has its own studio below it for you to practice. I’d give you a budget for things like crew outfits, clothes, food—“

“Wait, a budget for everything? We have jobs. We can take care of fo—“

“No. I want you two in tiptop shape. I want you two to win. I can’t have you distracted with things like _jobs_.”

Kerith felt Jaryn grip his wrist.

Could _this_ be the break they’d been waiting for year after year since arriving in the city?

“Yes.” Jaryn suddenly chirped. Oblio’s letter had flashed into her mind for a brief moment, but she threw the thought of it away. If these people he had gone on about were so dangerous, why didn’t he warn her in person? Warn her _exactly_. She thought it might have just been an excuse to help him leave easier and that made her push the letter even farther from her mind.

“Wait, can you give us a minute to talk about this?” Kerith threw his sister a sideways glance at her outburst before looking to Tan. The man nodded.

Pulling Jaryn off of the low couch, he led her to the railing overlooking the lower floor of the club.

Tan watched them from his seat. He could see how eager Jaryn was to get out of their rut. Sure, they were both dancing again, but there was more to life and she wanted that. Her energy and determination was suddenly apparent – he could see it as he watched them speak to each other, both of them now speaking with their hands and making gestures to emphasize things. He saw Kerith’s face change from a grimace to a grin and back again, before a sly smile crossed it. They both nodded and they were suddenly approaching him again.

“We want to see everything. We want a grand tour and a step-by-step guide as to what you expect from us. The schedule. The routines. Everything.” Kerith crossed his arms over his chest. Jaryn was standing beside him, hands on her hips.

“Done. I can come pick you up tomorrow morning.”

“We have work tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow afternoon then.” He took a business card out of the pocket of his jacket and held it out. Jaryn snagged it, reading it. “Call me tomorrow and let me know what time you’re getting off work. Oh, and the name of the place so I can find it.”

What a silly mistake. Luckily, he caught it before it got out of hand. He already knew where they worked, but they didn’t know that.

“Alright.” Jaryn handed the card to Kerith, who looked it over. “We’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“I look forward to it.” Dr. Tan stood and turned then descended the staircase. 

Kerith and Jaryn moved over to the railing and watched him shift through the crowd to the front door. Some people seemed to move for him, others he herded aside himself with a swat of the hand. They turned their heads to look at each other, both sets of eyes moving down to the business card Kerith held between them. He put it in his pocket and grabbed his shirley temple, finishing it and motioning to hers.

“Go ahead.” 

He picked hers up and finished it too, and then they left the establishment after Tan. They had to get up early for work the next morning. They had to be prepared for whatever adventure his tour would hold for them that afternoon too.

…

A week later they had everything that they wanted moved out of their tiny matchbox apartment and into the penthouse. There wasn’t much. Tan had provided them with a seemingly unlimited budget for everything and anything they wanted. The only rules were that they had to practice – which they had been doing in their new studio almost nonstop – and they had to put together outfits that would represent them as a crew. 

People had to recognize them. Their silhouettes, their outfits, their faces, their crew logo – their brand.

One of things they had brought to the penthouse from the old apartment was the mess of fashion spreads they had collected over the years and stuck to their wall. They used these to help them figure out their crew outfits. They liked bits and pieces from certain things but knew it needed more. They modified the rough sketches Kerith had drawn out to have the outfits reflect and match one another’s in certain places. Like the outfits they had put together previously from the thrift stores that always complimented each other, their crew outfits would do the same.

Not shying away from showing their logo off, that went right on the back of the crew outfits. Loud. Where everyone could see it, make note of it and remember it.

The first night of Tan’s very first competition, the preliminary rounds, Kerith and Jaryn stood in the brightly lit bathroom of the penthouse, staring at themselves in the giant, spotless mirror. They both stood in front of their respective sinks and finally looked to each other’s reflection.

They had gone to an expensive salon with a photo of them together taken after they had arrived at the city. They had asked for the haircuts Pearl had given them originally. Short with pointed bangs and dyed ash blonde. They were the haircuts they had the last time they were this full of hope, this excited about a new prospect. Last time it was going to the city. This time it was taking over the city.

“Needs something else.”

Kerith nodded.

Before Jaryn could finish _something else_ , Kerith slid a palette of eyeshadow to her. She recognized it. It was one of the palettes he used all of those nights he went out to the goth club. He had another in his hand and was already experimenting with lines on his face.

She mimicked his designs, peering at his reflection every few seconds to make sure they were still doing the same thing as each other. When they each had two lines under each eye – one silver and one black, they turned to each other.

“Raccoons?”

Jaryn laughed at her brother’s simple question, throwing her head back. The sound echoed in the cavernous bathroom and Kerith smiled. The sound – that loud cackle from his sister - made him jump. He wasn’t used to it. He welcomed it though. It was like music to his ears. His mind was dancing to that music. 

They were finally getting somewhere. They were happy. They were happy _together_.

He looked back at himself in the mirror, his smile fading momentarily at the sight he was met with. The black lines on his cheeks made the scar from his father stand out. It was on his right cheek and under the line of black makeup there, standing out bright and white, it seemed.

His sister knew right away what he had noticed and stepped over to him, picking up the makeup he had set down on the counter. She added another smaller black mark under the makeup already there, covering the scar. The mark she added fit with the shapes he had already made and looked like it belonged there.

“How’s that?”

He turned his head towards the mirror. “Perfect.”

Jaryn set the makeup back on the black marble counter and placed her hands on his sides, her palms sliding over the slick, silver fabric that made up the shirts of their crew outfits. She turned him around and began to push him slowly out of the bathroom. “Then let’s go show everyone how it’s done, hmm?”

“Sounds like a plan, Jare.”

…

Tan had been keeping a close eye on the two. They seemed to overspend a little, but it was understandable, considering their background. He had made a mental note to look into this _Pearl Allen_. They had tried to call her twice since they moved into Tan’s space, but her number seemed to be disconnected. 

He also found an interesting article while they had been practicing one day. He had printed it out and brought it into the studio, stopping their music and moving towards them with the paper held out in front of him. 

Kerith took it from Tan, looked down at it and was met with a photo of his father. Tan saw Jaryn’s face fall when she finally made her way over and her eyes hit the paper.

It was an article from a few years earlier about a missing set of twins and the supposed emotional and physical pain they had caused their father. It was horribly sympathetic to their father (who kept repeating “I just want my kids back”) and the more Kerith read, the more disgusted he became. Every single lie his father told in the article was like another bruise on his back, another slap in the face--

“Do you know anything about this?” Tan asked, placing his hands on his hips.

“Yeah, this article is complete _bullshit_ and he deserved what he got.” Kerith shoved the paper back in Tan’s chest and moved back to the spot where he’d been practicing.

Jaryn still stood ahead of Tan, arms crossed defensively over her chest. “He was horrible. Abusive. He was a problem. Our problem. And we left to get away from that problem. We wanted something better.”

“Well deserved.” Dr. Tan folded the article and slipped it into his pocket, then reached out and squeezed Jaryn’s wrist. “You two are ambitious.”

Turning, he made his way towards the studio exit. As he moved, he called without looking back, “I like that.”


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is more of an epilogue than a full chapter, but this is it! I knew I wanted to finish it before Dance Central 3 came out because I have a feeling that if the Glitterati are in DC3 (and since Oblio & Dr. Tan are in it as far as we know - and Oblio is working with Tan possibly against his own will) all of this will end up being a sort of alternate universe thing and not be able to fit in with the canon points we've had in the storylines of DC1 & 2! XD

Weeks had passed. Then months. A few competitions had gone by. The twins were getting noticed more often. People were talking. 

They were ignorant as to why Tan really wanted them on his side. They didn’t care though and his plan kept moving ahead, slowly but surely. He had looked into Pearl Allen. Nothing. Looked into their father. Couldn’t find much. He had assigned one of his mechanical minions to keep an eye on the twins from the Tandance Building. A gold one named Bernice.

One cool night in the spring, Kerith had finished showering in their oversized bathroom and was drying off, placing the towel over the steel rack and pulling on a pair of silk pants and a robe with their crew logo on it (just one of the many purchases they had made when they had gone a little overboard on their shopping sprees when they first moved in). He ran a hand through his wet hair and exited into the hallway, opening his mouth to say something to his sister in the living room when he stopped. He could hear a voice in there that wasn’t hers.

He moved to the wall and leaned in. He knew the voice well. But the person who owned it never told them he was coming over that night. Peeking around the corner, he saw Dr. Tan and Jaryn, Jaryn seated on the couch and Tan standing behind it.

His hands were on her shoulders and inching ever so slowly towards her neck. When they were in range, he began brushing his pointer fingers up and down her skin. 

“You and your brother are stars.”

She wasn’t registering his touch. She didn’t register anyone’s physical touch anymore. 

Except Kerith’s.

Her mother’s was the only other one she could remember welcoming so many years ago - her hugs, her pats on the back, when she ruffled Jaryn’s hair. Then there was her father, whose only physical contact was violent. Gregory, whose touch was commanding, unwanted and disturbing. Oblio… his was welcome. It was something new, something pleasant, something wonderful. And then it was _gone_.

Whenever she was close to Kerith, some part of her mind woke up; it lit up, filling her body with an electricity that energized her and reinforced the fact that they were two halves of a whole.

Their time in the city had taken its toll on Jaryn and the only time she felt like she could still take it all on was with her brother by her side. 

Dr. Tan’s fingers on her neck meant nothing to her, she absently tuned it out.

Kerith stood in the opening of the hallway that led back to their bedrooms, watching Dr. Tan talk to his sister. She was facing the giant windows that showed their balcony and the Tandance building next door. He noted the empty look in her glazed eyes, the way her hands were folded neatly in her lap while he stood there, yapping incessantly and caressing her neck. 

When Jaryn was interacting with anyone but Kerith she could be anywhere from verbally indifferent to verbally brutal, and her brother always noted this.

That was alright though. Calming almost. Like they had agreed after Oblio left, they only had each other. They only _needed_ each other. Sure, Tan had been a huge help to get them to where they were at that point in time, but they survived long enough without him. If they had to, they could manage again.

“Didn’t know you were stopping by tonight,” Kerith breezed into the main chamber of the Penthaüs (the title the two of them had affectionately given their living space) like he had just left the bathroom and stumbled upon Tan’s presence. “I trust everything is alright?”

“Better than alright, Kerith.” Tan answered, finally pulling his hands away from Jaryn.

Kerith felt a small bit of comfort at the fact that the man moved away from his sister and he watched her absently shift her head to the left, her chin touching her shoulder and her eyes meeting his. 

He could tell that small raise of the eyebrows she delivered was a silent _thank you_ and after catching that, Kerith turned his attention to Tan once more. “Oh? Why’s that?”

“You two are the talk of the town.”

Kerith casually shrugged as he opened the giant refrigerator and stuck his head inside. 

“I trust you two will keep it up, right? There’s a huge event coming up and—“

“Why wouldn’t we?” Jaryn asked, from the living room. 

“I just don’t want you two getting distracted by anything. I want you both in—“

“We don’t do _distractions_ ,” Jaryn deadpanned.

Kerith pulled himself out of the cold air and peered into the next room, to his sister, who was still seated, stiff-backed and hands placed in her lap.

Tan said something about how that was _good_ and he was _counting on them_ —the nonsense “pep talks” he always spouted to them when he wanted them to win. Kerith could faintly hear him somewhere in his head, blabbing and then exiting their living space, shutting the door behind him. His attention was on Jaryn. She hadn’t moved. She had only shifted her narrowed eyes to the door and was staring at it.

He shut the fridge and rounded the marble counter of their kitchen, sliding onto the couch and shifting close to Jaryn, placing his right arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him and buried her head in the crook of his neck.

They said nothing to each other for a few minutes and Kerith just listened to his sister’s slow breathing. He could feel her shift in his arms slightly and that was when she spoke up.

“We should go out and practice on the balcony.”

She pulled away from him and looked up to him and he could see the glimmer of something in her eyes. Something he hadn’t seen much lately. 

“Don’t you think it’s a bit small for that?” Kerith tore his eyes from her and looked to the giant windows.

“We have money. We can extend it. Add some speakers out there.”

Kerith laughed.

Within a week they had construction crews on their balcony. Kerith was overseeing the work. Jaryn would sit on the couch and observe. She didn’t say much to anyone anymore unless it was her brother. Her thoughts moved everywhere from the city to their broken family to their mother to Dr. Tan to the roller rink to Lady Gaga. But her voice usually didn’t express any of that.

Sometimes her thoughts went to their father.

Sometimes her thoughts went to Gregory.

Sometimes her thoughts went to Kerith’s old “friends”…

Sometimes her thoughts went to Oblio.

She kept telling herself to forget them all – to look forward. Things were different now. Very different.

She looked out to the balcony, through the glass to where her brother stood. He had his back resting against the windows. Jaryn stood from the couch and shuffled her bare feet over the white carpet, pressing her forehead against the glass. The small noise she had made caused Kerith to turn around and peer to her through the window. He leaned down slightly and pressed his forehead to the glass to meet hers.

 _Are you okay?_ He mouthed.

Jaryn nodded.

Kerith put his finger up between them, against his side of the glass and motioned for her to come outside. When she appeared beside him, squinting in the daylight, Kerith pushed his sunglasses on her face and swept his hand out in front of him.

“How does it look?”

Her lips upturned at the sight of their crew logo swinging slowly back and forth; ready to be lowered onto the front of the balcony railing once it was completed. “Perfect.”

The railing wasn’t on the balcony yet when they invited people over for a party. They joked that people were smart enough to stay away from the edges. They joked that the construction equipment added to the décor and the feel. Kerith was relieved to see his sister show some emotion, even though she always did to him. 

He was always afraid of that last trace of emotion escaping her. He was afraid of her slipping away from him, just like he had from her in his alcoholic haze, just like his father had from their family in his own alcoholic haze.

Jaryn was always there though, just like he was for her. When he twisted his ankle in practice, she brought him food and magazines. When she had a bout of recurring nightmares about their childhood home, Kerith tucked her into his bed next to him and they slept like they did when they lived in their tiny studio apartment. Whenever their birthday came along, they ate at the Chinese buffet and shared cupcakes back at their place.

The first night they partied on the unfinished balcony and finished dancing for the mass of people around them, Jaryn swore she saw a head of rich blue hair in the crowd, past Kerith, but it wasn’t. Her brother came back into focus beside her. He had a huge, sly grin on his face and his left hand was still waving at the crowd around them. His right arm had locked with her left. Jaryn steeled herself and turned her head out to the crowd who was still cheering and clapping wildly for them. Her right arm rose, without a second thought, and she waved, mirroring her brother’s devious smile.

They were together. They had each other and only each other, just like it had always been.

Janey and Keith. 

Jaryn and Kerith. 

_The Glitterati._

This was it. They had made it. They had finally discovered it. This was _their beginning._


End file.
